Google's Best Model Costs a Fifth of OpenAI's. Almost Nobody Can Buy It.
Gemini 4 Argon launched September 30 at $2 per million input tokens against GPT-6 Astra's $10 — and is available only to vetted cyber defenders. The same week OpenAI shipped always-on agents on a model a government institute flagged. Google withheld a model that ties it on cyber. That is the costly-signal test, passed.