Gemini 4 Argon nears AI frontier with 97.5% on ARC-AGI-3, trails in math and code
Google DeepMind's new frontier model, Gemini 4 Argon, scored 97.5% on ARC-AGI-3 at a cost of $4,800 using the "Provider Adapter Harness," a setup that relies on vendor-specific features such as retained reasoning and context compaction; according to ARC Prize, Google is the second lab after OpenAI to pass 95%, with only GPT-6 Astra higher at 99.9%. Results depend heavily on the harness: in the "Standard Harness," which allows only simple notes between rounds, Argon dropped to 49.8% at low reasoning for $5,800 and failed to complete all 55 games because of API problems. Epoch AI's Epoch Capabilities Index puts Argon at 165 points, tied with Fable 5.1 and just behind Opus 5.5 (167) and GPT-6 Astra (166) — Google's closest position to the frontier since Gemini 3.1 Pro in February 2026 — although early estimates rank it eighth on the Math ECI and sixth on the Software Engineering Index, even as it leads several knowledge, agent and vision benchmarks.
It shows Google is back near the frontier, but the score is bound to a specific test setup and cost, so the benchmark number should be read with its method.