Google announces Gemini 4 flagship AI model after months of delays

By Kenrick Cai

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Alphabet's Google GOOGL.O on Wednesday announced a new top-shelf artificial intelligence model to anchor its new Gemini 4 generation of models in a fresh bid to catch up to rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI race.

The new "Argon" model is larger in size than Google's previous line of top-tier "Pro" models, a company spokesperson 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 spokesperson said.

Google said it was providing the model to select cybersecurity partners and was participating in the Trump administration's voluntary process for pre-release model access. It did not provide a timeline for the model's public release.