Google unveils Gemini 4 Argon 10/1/26

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1:00Google, just unveiling its latest and most advanced AI model, Mackenzie Scegullis, has the details Mackenzie and how it stacks up. Yes, Sarah, this is the model that we have been waiting for. Google's Gemini 4, our God promises major advances in coding. It ties OpenAI on a key cybersecurity benchmark and its introductory pricing matches OpenAI's latest cuts, but Wall Street very much focused on what Google actually builds with it. JP Morgan saying in a note this morning that Google needs a major step forward in personal AI agents, well, Bank of America sees Argonne potentially laying the groundwork for one. And that's where the conversation in Silicon Valley has shifted. You don't need the most powerful front-to-your-bottle to build a great personal assistant. Meta's free mues app continues to top the charts while Google's competing agent Spark remains behind a paywall. There's also a capability gap. I spoke with Google's agent team and they tell me that Spark works across Gmail, Calendar, and Chrome, but by design cannot make calls or complete purchases.

2:00Those are features that are available through mues that have helped drive mass consumer adoption. And keep in mind, Google had virtually every advantage going into this race. Billions of people use its products with their emails, calendars, and personal data already inside its ecosystem, meanwhile rivals have to persuade users to connect all those accounts. I asked Gemini's product chief whether Argonne could ultimately power a revamped personal AI agent and she says that Google is exploring that internally, particularly for complex multi-step tasks. The Spark team tells me there's still no announced timeline for expanding access beyond those paying subscribers. And Argonne itself, that new model, remains restricted to select cyber defenders and cloud customers while undergoing US government safety testing. Perhaps why Alphabet shares have erased their pre-market gains and are trading in the red right now? Guys. Yeah, I mean, is the market still thinking that the fastest model and the best model wins or is there a rethink of it, given, for instance, mues is entry into the consumer AI market?

3:04And just the fact that Anthropic and OpenAI both seem to be growing even though it changes whose models, I guess, better and faster. Yeah, definitely the latter. The conversation has entirely shifted to what is your agentic strategy here where a flash model from Gemini would probably get the job done for less money. And the overarching concern, part of what the street has been talking about this morning, Bank of America, JP Morgan, is that Google's core search business, how they print money and have such a high margin still as they pay this massive cat-pix bill, is search, right? And so if you have a competing model or rather a competing agent from the likes of Mues that is completing a transaction for you, whether that's related to travel or this new Walmart partnership, ostensibly you could bypass search altogether. And that's potentially problematic, which is why the street is so keen to see arrival offering. And we do have Spark, that is the name of their agent, but it is behind this paywall. People want to see it unleashed to the masses with some of these merchant capabilities baked in, because that's the other question here, how do you monetize it?

4:05And with Meta Worseing, this very interesting example of getting a cut of transactions, people would certainly like to see a similar setup in terms of that merchant Google relationship when we get Spark unleashed to the masses. Yeah, well we've been through existential worries regarding search before. We'll see if this is a more powerful chapter, certainly 3 million weekly users, and less than a month on Mues is pretty interesting. Thanks, Mack, McKenzie Cigalos. Every house has a beginning, ours starts with a rebellion, this is not just fashion, this is freedom worn out loud, a place where individuality isn't a look, it's a law, perfect is boring. The algorithm doesn't know you, you do, a look is never just a look, it's a declaration, it's time to step out and into somewhere new, step into the house and burl, and find a burling to near you.