SAN FRANCISCO: Google’s artificial intelligence assistant Gemini has surpassed one billion monthly users, marking a major milestone as the technology giant competes with OpenAI, Anthropic and emerging Chinese AI developers.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the milestone on Tuesday, describing Gemini as the company’s “fastest growing product ever”.
Gemini has also become the 14th Google product to reach the one-billion-user mark. The company calculated the figure based on people using the Gemini app across its wider ecosystem.
The milestone comes amid a major reorganisation of Google’s AI operations. Nobel Prize-winning scientist Demis Hassabis recently stepped back from the day-to-day management of Google DeepMind, while several prominent researchers, including longtime engineer Jeff Dean, have also departed.
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Google has yet to release its flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro model, initially expected in June, while competitors have introduced new models with increasingly advanced capabilities, particularly in computer coding.
AI competition intensifies
Google’s enormous existing user base remains a major advantage as the company integrates Gemini-powered AI capabilities across services including Search, Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube.
OpenAI announced in July that it had reached one billion users across its interfaces, led by ChatGPT, although it did not specify whether the figure represented monthly or weekly users.
Competition in the AI assistant market is also growing from Anthropic’s Claude and China’s DeepSeek.
According to research firm Sensor Tower, ChatGPT’s share of the AI assistant market fell below 50% during the first half of 2026, highlighting an increasingly competitive global market.
