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points by mattlondon 1 day ago | 0 comments

Sooo... Is Carbon 4.1? Or is it different to Argon 4 somehow? Different model? Or point update?

Is Argon "pro" and Carbon "ultra"?

Is Argon obsolete now? Does Carbon replace it or live alongside of it?

Very confusing naming!

[–] WASDx 1 day ago

1. "Building on Gemini 4 Argon". 2. Same price. 3. Relatively short time between releases.

Makes me think it's further post-training of the same model.

[–] onlyrealcuzzo 1 day ago

IIUC, that was all the Flash releases from 3.5 to 3.8

[–] arppacket 23 hours ago

Their Flash-lite, Flash, Pro naming convention was fine, at least until they stopped updating the Pro model lol. I guess the marketing department wanted a clean reset so that people would forget that gap, so they copied the other companies.

But they still kept the embarrassing 3.1 pro model in the Gemini app to remind people, so I'm not sure what they achieved.

[–] RajuChacha108 1 day ago

For Gemini that is a foundation model version 3.1 3.5 4 etc. and there is checkpoint on evolution of those specific models. Gemini 4 had Argon - B<> - Carbon and who knows they might have Dysporsium or Europium.

Or you might get Gemini 5 Arizona.

[–] coffeebeqn 1 day ago

I’m just even more confused

[–] owkman 1 day ago

Yes.. very confusing names. Carbon is the next iteration of Argon.

[–] jazdw 1 day ago

It's just what some PM thinks sounds cool

[–] NickNaraghi 1 day ago

Carbon is like Opus

Argon is like Sonnet

[–] qt31415926 1 day ago

I'm surprised no one at Google realized that both OpenAI and Anthropic's naming schemes follow a fairly clear progression and that they should do something similar to reduce confusion. I would have assumed the opposite given that Argon has a higher periodic number

[–] kylestanfield 1 day ago

Lots of commenters here are confused by Luna, Terra, and Sol still haha.

[–] Jtarii 1 day ago

It isn't obvious that a fable is "better" than an opus either.

[–] cubefox 1 day ago

Originally the model tier that was better than Opus was called Mythos, which makes sense. Fable makes no sense, since a fable is just a small story with animals. They should have used "Legend" rather than Fable.

[–] johanyc 1 day ago

That's on them imo. The point is consistency

[–] atakanaluc 1 day ago

Both seem to have the same pricing: $2 in / $10 out initially, rising to $4 in / $20 out after the introductory period. That made me wonder whether Carbon might be Argon with additional RL training. What’s the Opus/Sonnet comparison based on?

[–] owkman 1 day ago

No, it's not. The naming is just bad. It's the next iteration of Argon

[–] hiddencost 1 day ago

I don't think that's right. Carbon and Argon have the same price.

I suspect they're using a new naming convention because they had previous contractual obligations tied to the "pro" and "flash" naming, and by switching to a new naming schema they avoid those commitments.

[–] bsiverly 1 day ago

Helium will be small and squeaky I presume

[–] mattlondon 1 day ago

So Argon was 4.0 Flash effectively? Interesting that there is such a small gap between their new Pro and Flash tiers

[–] luckydata 1 day ago

Carbon is Fable / Astra level. Argon is their Opus / Sol.

[–] aslilac 1 day ago

then why are both priced like sonnet?

[–] fancyfredbot 1 day ago

They didn't pay the Nvidia tax

[–] luckydata 1 day ago

Carbon is discounted temporarily. It's twice as expensive as Argon. Google TPUs are more efficient than Nvidia hardware plus Google gets them at cost so they have both better margins and more pricing power compared to other frontier labs.