Alphabet Shares Rise After Google Launches Gemini 4 Argon AI Model

Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares rose about 2% in US premarket trading on Thursday after Google launched Gemini 4 Argon, a new artificial intelligence model focused on areas including coding and cybersecurity.

Google said Gemini 4 Argon will initially be made available to a group of trusted cybersecurity researchers before a broader rollout. Paid API customers and Google AI Ultra subscribers are expected to receive access first, followed by wider availability for developers, businesses and consumers.

Jefferies said Gemini 4 Argon is launching at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. According to the brokerage, Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1 is priced at $10 and $50 respectively, while Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4 and $20. Google is also offering a 95% discount on cached input tokens.

Google Reports Coding and Cybersecurity Benchmark Results

Google said Gemini 4 Argon achieved a score of 77.9% on the DeepSWE v1.1 coding benchmark, which the company described as a record result.

Jefferies noted that the model trails leading competitors on the more demanding FrontierSWE v2 benchmark. However, Argon ranked first for coding on LLM Arena’s Text Arena and eighth on Code Arena: Web Dev, 21 positions higher than Gemini 3.8 Flash, according to the brokerage.

Google also said Argon can autonomously identify, verify and address software vulnerabilities.

Jefferies said the model tied Grok 4.7 with a score of 68% on CWE-bench v1, a benchmark designed to test vulnerability fixes.

According to figures cited by Jefferies, Argon recorded a 0.7% success rate for prompt-injection attacks, compared with 1% for Claude Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1.

For the initial cybersecurity rollout, Google said it will provide Gemini 4 Argon without some of its standard safeguards to trusted defenders and internal teams. Cybersecurity company Wiz is using the model through its Scan for Good programme, according to Google.

Output Capacity Increased to One Million Tokens

Google said Gemini 4 Argon also produced results across tests covering automation, long-form video and professional tasks in areas including finance, legal services and tax.

The model’s output limit has been increased to one million tokens from 64,000. Jefferies said this compares with an output limit of 128,000 tokens for Anthropic’s competing models.

Google said it is already using Argon internally for software development and data-centre optimisation. The company’s claims about these internal applications do not yet establish broader commercial adoption of the model.

Jefferies cautioned that real-world use will be required to assess whether the model’s early benchmark performance translates into practical results. The brokerage also said the systems used to operate and evaluate AI models are becoming increasingly important to overall performance.

Google said it plans to strengthen safeguards before making Gemini 4 Argon more widely available, including monitoring for potential misuse and intervening when necessary to prevent harmful actions.

Jefferies maintains a “buy” rating on Alphabet with a $445 price target. The brokerage said Alphabet shares had fallen 16% from their May 18 peak amid investor concerns about the company’s competitive position while awaiting Gemini 4 Pro. Analyst ratings and price targets represent forecasts and are not guarantees of future share-price performance.

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