Google has announced Argon, a new top-tier AI model to anchor its Gemini 4 generation, in a fresh bid to catch up with rivals Anthropic and OpenAI.
Argon is larger than Google’s previous line of advanced “Pro” models, a company spokesman said.
“It’s our most performant model yet built for complex workloads, and we see it comparable to frontier models like [OpenAI’s] Astra and [Anthropic’s] Opus on key coding and cyber benchmarks,” the spokesman said.
Google said it was providing the model to select cybersecurity partners and was taking part in the Trump administration’s voluntary process for pre-release model access. It gave no timeline for a public release.
In Google’s own testing, as set out in its press release, Argon outscored Astra and Opus on several industry benchmarks. It trailed them on others, however, including two of the four coding benchmarks Google included.
Google no longer plans to release Gemini 3.5 Pro, which CEO Sundar Pichai had said would arrive in June, the spokesman said.
In the meantime, Google overhauled its DeepMind AI lab. Co-founder Demis Hassabis stepped aside as CEO in August to become the unit’s chair, and several leaders of the Gemini effort left the company.
Behind
The delays left Google behind Anthropic and OpenAI, which continued to push the research frontier with new releases of their top models.
Pichai pushed back in July on the notion that Google was losing ground in the AI race. But in recent months Google has shifted its messaging from Gemini’s cutting-edge capabilities to its cost advantage over competing models. — Kenrick Cai, (c) 2026 Reuters
