Alphabet (GOOGL) Stock Rises on BNP Paribas Bullish Note After Gemini 4 Argon Launch
π BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones maintains a Buy rating and $420 price target for GOOGL following the Gemini 4 Argon launch.
π€ Gemini 4 Argon outperformed OpenAI's Astra and Anthropic's Fable 5.1 in 13 of 19 benchmarks including coding and cyber defense.
π‘οΈ CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the model features frontier safeguards and is rolling out to the U.S. government via the Fairwind Program.
π° Argon pricing is set at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens with a 95% discount for cached inputs.
π The launch was delayed from June to focus on coding performance and safety testing, rebranded as Gemini 4 Argon.
π Analysts expect Google to release more Gemini 4 models at different price points targeting various tasks and budgets.
π± Jones suggests a future consumer-facing AI agent similar to Meta's Muse built across Google's massive user base.
π GOOGL holds a Strong Buy consensus from 24 analysts with an average price target of $427.88 implying 27% upside.
- BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones maintains a Buy rating and $420 price target following the successful Gemini 4 Argon launch.
- Gemini 4 Argon beat OpenAI's Astra and Anthropic's Fable 5.1 in 13 of 19 benchmarks covering coding, cyber defense, and multimodal tasks.
- CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the model includes frontier safeguards and is being deployed to the U.S. government via the Fairwind Program.
- Wall Street sentiment remains strong with a Strong Buy consensus from 24 analysts implying roughly 27% upside from current levels.
- The new AI model is already being used internally by Google staff for coding, research, and writing tasks.
- The launch of Gemini 4 Argon was delayed from an expected June release originally under the name Gemini 3.5 Pro.
- Alphabet's market value dropped close to 20% since the delay, as investors worried Google was falling behind OpenAI and Anthropic.