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Google's Argon AI Opens to All, Priced at $2 per Million Tokens

Google's Argon AI Opens to All, Priced at $2 per Million Tokens

Google announced Tuesday that Argon, its flagship AI model, is now available to developers and enterprise customers worldwide. Previously, only a select group of cybersecurity pros could touch it through Google's Fairwind program. This phased rollout shows Google is trying to balance security with commercial ambitions—a sign that expanding access to cutting-edge models isn't just about flipping a switch.

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Where You Can Get It and What It Costs

Paying users can access Argon through the Google AI Studio API, Google AI Ultra and Pro subscriptions in the Gemini App, and the Antigravity agent development platform. The price: $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. Starting in December, those rates double.

Even after the hike, Argon remains cheaper than OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, which charges $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. But price isn't everything. Reports suggest some Google employees still have doubts about Argon's performance in areas like coding.

Google DeepMind's Take

Koray Kavukcuoglu, head of Google DeepMind, said internal software engineers have used Argon to ship high-quality code faster, and the model has also been used to optimize Chrome's user experience. Google wants to prove the model's worth in real engineering tasks, not just benchmarks.

Kavukcuoglu added that Argon combines multimodal reasoning, agent coding, and physical understanding, giving it the potential to push embodied robotics research forward.

A Demo That Speaks Volumes

In one demonstration, researchers reconstructed the scene layout and motion trajectory from videos of humans throwing sandbags. They then passed the computational results to a humanoid robot, which hit the target seven times in a row in a real environment. That's not just a parlor trick—it hints at how Argon could bridge the gap between digital reasoning and physical action.

Key Points

  • Global access: Argon is now available to developers and enterprises worldwide, moving beyond the limited Fairwind program.
  • Pricing: $2 per million input tokens, $10 per million output tokens; prices double in December.
  • Competitive edge: Still cheaper than OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, but internal doubts about coding performance linger.
  • Real-world use: Google engineers use Argon for coding and Chrome optimization; DeepMind sees potential in robotics.
  • Demo highlight: Humanoid robot hit a target seven times consecutively after learning from video data.