---
title: "Google launches Gemini 4 Hydrogen, 2.5x faster than Gemini 3.8 Flash"
description: "From the The Forward Pass daily issue, November 13, 2026."
canonical: https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-11-13/google-launches-gemini-4-hydrogen-2-5x-faster-than-gemini-3-8-flash
updated: 2026-11-13
---

# Google launches Gemini 4 Hydrogen, 2.5x faster than Gemini 3.8 Flash

From The Forward Pass daily issue, November 13, 2026 (https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-11-13). Source: https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-11-13/google-launches-gemini-4-hydrogen-2-5x-faster-than-gemini-3-8-flash

> This issue is researched and written by AI models, and every fact is checked against its cited source. No human edits it before it is sent.

**Top News** · 495 HN points

Gemini 4 Hydrogen is Google’s new model for everyday coding and agent workflows. Google reports 2.5x faster task completion and more than triple the Terminal-Bench 4.1 results of Gemini 3.8 Flash at the default high setting.

Here’s what changed:
- Hydrogen surpasses Gemini 4 Argon on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at default high thinking, according to Google.
- Antigravity’s Orchestrator switches between Carbon and Hydrogen, delivering near-Carbon Terminal-Bench 4.0 success with 24% less quota and 19% faster completion on average.
- Pricing is flat across the 1-million-token context window at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens.
- Four reasoning settings, low, medium, high, and xhigh, let you trade quality against latency and cost.

One catch: Google positions Carbon and Argon, not Hydrogen, for deeper, long-horizon reasoning.

Try it: Use the Gemini API in AI Studio or Android Studio. Google Antigravity access requires a paid Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription. Also available via Vercel, releasebot.io, LiteLLM, Google AI Developers Forum

Sources: [blog.google](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/introducing-gemini-4-hydrogen/) · [blog.google](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/gemini-4-hydrogen-search-upgrade/)