Google’s Gemini surges past 650 million users as AI race heats up

Google’s artificial intelligence assistant, Gemini, has surged past 650 million monthly active users, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai announced this week — a milestone that underscores both the app’s growing momentum and the escalating race for AI dominance.

The figure marks a steep rise from 450 million users in July and 350 million in March, growth that Pichai attributed partly to Gemini’s viral image-generation tool, Nano Banana. Queries on the app have tripled since the second quarter, he said, though without sharing detailed numbers.

Gemini’s user base, while expanding rapidly, still trails its biggest competitors. OpenAI recently said ChatGPT now draws over 800 million weekly users, while Meta’s AI assistant has topped one billion monthly active users across its platforms.

For Google, however, Gemini’s success extends beyond user numbers. It has become a critical lever in the company’s effort to expand its subscription business and reduce dependence on advertising. Pichai said Google now has more than 300 million paid subscriptions, led by Google One and YouTube Premium.

Over the past year, Google One has rolled out new tiers tied directly to its AI ecosystem, including a lower-cost “Google AI Plus” plan and a premium “Google AI Ultra” tier. These packages give users access to advanced AI features such as Deep Research, expanded image and video generation limits, and priority access to new tools and models.

Gemini 3 on the Horizon

Pichai also confirmed that Google plans to launch Gemini 3, the next major iteration of its AI model, later this year. The company is positioning it as a significant leap forward in its generative AI roadmap.

“Each prior model we improve becomes more capable,” Pichai said. “The underlying pace is phenomenal to see, and I’m excited about our Gemini 3.0 release later this year.”

Google’s broader AI ecosystem continues to expand rapidly. More than 13 million developers have used its generative models, including Gemini, Veo, Genie 3, and Nano Banana. Together, these systems now process roughly seven billion tokens per minute through direct API usage.

Veo 3, the company’s AI video generator, has already been used to create more than 230 million videos, reflecting the accelerating adoption of Google’s creative AI tools.

Alphabet’s $100 Billion Milestone

Pichai’s comments came alongside Alphabet’s quarterly earnings report, which marked a new high point for the company. For the three months ended September, Alphabet posted $102.3 billion in consolidated revenue — its first-ever quarter above the $100 billion mark — up 16 percent year-on-year.

Growth was broad-based, driven by strong performance across Google Search, YouTube ads, Google Cloud, and the company’s subscription and devices businesses.

“Five years ago, our quarterly revenue was $50 billion,” Pichai said. “Our revenue has doubled since then, and we’re firmly in the generative AI era. In parallel, we’ve diversified with successful businesses in Cloud, YouTube and subscriptions.”

Alphabet now counts 13 product lines each generating over $1 billion annually, signaling a strategic shift away from its traditional ad-driven model.

The company also raised its capital expenditure forecast for 2025 to between $91 billion and $93 billion, up from $85 billion projected earlier this year. The increase reflects Alphabet’s investments in AI infrastructure, data centers, and growing cloud demand.

As AI competition intensifies, Google’s expanding ecosystem — spanning consumer apps, developer tools, and subscription products — will be central to how it defends its dominance in the new computing era.