Google Gemini 4 arrives as Wall Street shifts to personal agents

Google may be back at the frontier of artificial intelligence, but investors and consumers are increasingly focusing on what people can build with the technology as personal agents surge in popularity.

The company unveiled its long-awaited Gemini 4 Argon model on Wednesday, promising major advances in coding, cybersecurity, and complex tasks. According to industry benchmarks, Argon ties OpenAI on a key cybersecurity test and posts leading results in software engineering.

Argon’s introductory pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens also matches OpenAI’s newly discounted GPT-6.1 Sol model. A token is equivalent to about three-quarters of one word.

While Google is stepping up its game in the model battle, rival Meta is racking up millions of downloads for its Muse app, which launched last month and soared to the top of Apple’s App Store, topping ChatGPT. Earlier this week, OpenAI rolled out Dots, its personal agent offering, capitalizing on demand from businesses and consumers for tools that can carry out tasks — like scouring emails, booking travel and organizing expenses — on a user’s behalf.

Meanwhile, the attention at the frontier model level has turned to safety, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sparking a firestorm three weeks ago by urging the top AI labs to slow the pace of development as concerns intensify about their potential dangers.

Over the past three months, Alphabet’s stock is down about 6%, while Meta is up 19% over that stretch, sparked by September’s rally, which was the sharpest for any month since 2022.

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase wrote in a note on Thursday that Google needs a significant advance in its personal agent offerings to generate consumer enthusiasm. Bank of America identified the potential for Gemini 4 to strengthen Google’s cloud business and existing products, while providing a foundation for a future personal agent.

In the consumer market, Google has a massive home-court advantage.

Billions of people use Google products, including Gmail, Calendar, Chrome, and Search. Their messages and schedules are already stored within Google’s ecosystem, potentially giving the company a substantial edge in developing an assistant capable of working across those services.

Yet Google’s personal agent, Spark, remains limited to paying subscribers, while Muse is free with usage caps. As of Sept. 30, Muse had reached more than 5 million downloads, according to Sensor Tower.

In a background briefing with CNBC, members of Google’s agent team outlined Spark’s existing capabilities and the company’s approach to expanding access, and acknowledged that Muse’s free availability has helped consumers discover and experiment with it.

Launched in May at Google’s I/O developers conference, Spark can work across Gmail and Calendar, navigate…