Reported October 28, 2026, Google DeepMind's latest frontier model tops the independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 with a score of 59 — but it ships to a vetted few first, not to creators.
2026-10-30 · by Moe Ameen
Google's Gemini 4 Carbon reached the top of the independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, according to Artificial Analysis's October 28, 2026 analysis, which placed Carbon first on its v5 index with a score of 59 at high reasoning. It is Google DeepMind's latest frontier model, announced in late October 2026 — about four weeks after Gemini 4 Argon, the first model of the Gemini 4 generation — and like Argon it is positioned around hard reasoning and cybersecurity rather than consumer media.
The index is a composite of nine evaluations, and Carbon ranks first on four of them — Humanity's Last Exam (HLE-Diamond), Terminal-Bench-Science, AA-Omniscience, and AutomationBench-AA — while scoring about nine points higher than Argon overall. Artificial Analysis also reports one of the lowest hallucination rates among leading models (around 11%, second only to Argon), paired with a one-million-token context window and input across text, images, video, and speech; its output is text. The lead is not a clean sweep: on the Coding Agent Index Carbon scores 59 to Claude Opus 5.5's 62, and it trails on a couple of coding and terminal benchmarks. A separate independent index, Vals AI, placed it second of the models it had tested.
Access is gated. Google is rolling Carbon out to a vetted group first through its Fairwind security program, with wider availability planned but undated, so most people — creators included — can't open it yet. On price, Artificial Analysis lists standard API rates of $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, with Google offering a 50% launch discount (which lines up with Argon's $2/$10 introductory pricing) and a steep discount on cached input. Treat the exact scores, prices, and rollout timing as a fast-moving snapshot and confirm against Google's and Artificial Analysis's own pages, since the leaderboard and the model's availability are both still changing.
A model topping an index is a leaderboard event, and the leaderboard moves monthly — Carbon passed Argon in under a month, and something will pass Carbon. The useful question for anyone who makes content isn't which brain is smartest this week; it's what still has to happen after the brain is done thinking. Carbon can reason through a frontier exam and read a million tokens, but it can't cut a vertical short, build a brand-exact carousel, render an avatar video, or post to a single platform. The frontier keeps racing toward reasoning; reach is a different layer entirely, and it's the layer you actually get paid for.
[Kompozy](/) is that layer, and it's model-agnostic by design — it already runs on frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI for copy plus Google Gemini for face-locked avatar images, so whichever model wins the next benchmark, your pipeline inherits the gain without you rewiring a thing. Hand it a source and it generates the finished set: [Persona Shorts](/glossary/persona-shorts) and HeyGen avatar video, brand-exact [Carousel Posts](/glossary/hyperframes), Blog Articles, [Quote Graphics](/glossary/output-buckets), and an Email Newsletter, all held to one voice by a [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief), then scheduled and published across eight social platforms plus your blog and Mailchimp on [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) behind a per-post review gate. You don't need Fairwind access to grow this quarter; you need the engine that ships, and it's self-serve today. For the sibling model that reached the index first, see our report on [Gemini 4 Argon](/news/gemini-4-argon).
Gemini 4 Carbon is Google DeepMind's latest frontier model, announced in late October 2026, and the model that reached No. 1 on the independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (v5, score 59). It is tuned for hard reasoning and cybersecurity, with a one-million-token context window and input across text, images, video, and speech. Its output is text; it generates no images or video.
Not generally. Google is rolling Carbon out to a vetted group first through its Fairwind security program, with broader availability planned but undated. Most people, creators included, cannot open it yet. Artificial Analysis also notes it was rolling out to selected users at the time of its analysis.
Artificial Analysis scores Carbon about nine points higher than Argon on its intelligence index and ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 on that index, at a lower cost per task. But Carbon trails Claude Opus 5.5 on the Coding Agent Index (59 vs 62) and on some coding and terminal benchmarks, so the lead depends on the task.
No. Carbon reasons over and analyzes text, images, and video, but its output is text. To turn its analysis or drafts into publishable posts, avatar video, carousels, blogs, and newsletters — and schedule them across platforms — you pair it with a content generation and publishing engine like Kompozy.