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Google says Gemini 4 Carbon ranks first on one index

Google releases Gemini 4 Carbon to cyber defenders first and developers later, and its first place on a leaderboard and its security scores are Google's own reports

Concept illustration of a beige storefront wall with three windows: at the top a red, yellow, green and blue letter G is linked by a line to a sign lettered GOOGLE, and in the centre window a sign lettered GEMINI 4 CARBON is linked by a line to a laptop on the counter whose screen shows a speech bubble with grey lines, where a short-haired person in a brown sweater and beige trousers types, with a blank tag hanging below the counter. On the left a sign lettered CYBER DEFENDERS is linked by a line to one of two black stanchion posts, and on the right a sign lettered DEVELOPERS is linked to a post with a red rope strung to a second post, behind which a long-haired person in a white top and dark trousers stands facing the counter.

Why it matters: Our inference: if other frontier labs also give cyber defenders access before developers, teams planning to build on a new model should count from the developer access date, which Google has not given.

Google released the frontier model Gemini 4 Carbon on its blog on October 28, about two weeks after the previous model, Argon.

Carbon is the second model in the Gemini 4 series, and its comparison point is Argon from two weeks earlier. Google reports that Carbon scored 59 and ranked first on version 5.0 of the overall index from Artificial Analysis, a third-party evaluator that scores and ranks models from every lab. The blog doesn't say who is second or by how much. According to Google's blog, in the third party Gray Swan's indirect prompt-injection evaluation, the attack success rate fell from Argon's 0.7% to 0%; lower is better. On Google's internal benchmark, the success rate for generating secure code is more than double Argon's. Google also ran three outside security evaluations itself, all measured with safety protections switched off; the released version has protections on, and the blog doesn't list the models compared or their scores. On WebDev Arena, a third-party leaderboard that ranks models by head-to-head comparisons of web pages they build, Carbon ranks fourth, 89 points above Argon (Google, 2026-10-28; Pichai on X, 2026-10-28).

Google has set Carbon's price but not the date most users get it. From this week Carbon goes only to some cyber defenders, then opens gradually to trusted partners through the Fairwind Program, and only after that to developers, enterprises and consumers. Carbon keeps Argon's promotional price of US$2 per million input tokens and US$10 per million output tokens, rising to US$4 and US$20 when the promotion ends. The blog gives neither the date developers get access nor how long the promotion lasts. Google also says it took part in the US government's voluntary pre-release testing.

Not proven yet: the first place and the security scores are Google's own, with no rivals named How we checked →

Next to watch: the date developers get Carbon, and the gap between Carbon and second place on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard page.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 29, 2026, alongside 16 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "Google says Gemini 4 Carbon ranks first on one index." https://secondsource.io/en/news/2026-10-29-4/. Accessed access date.