Google's Gemini AI assistant reaches one billion users

Google's artificial intelligence assistant Gemini has reached one billion monthly users, CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Tuesday, a week after a significant reorganization of the company's AI division. Pichai shared the milestone on social media, noting that it marks the 14th product to reach a billion users, and called Gemini "our fastest growing product ever."

This achievement comes as Google navigates a major overhaul of its AI division, following the departure of key figures such as Demis Hassabis, who stepped down from managing DeepMind, and Jeff Dean, a long-time engineer in the group. Despite these changes, Google's main strength remains its user base, which it leverages to integrate AI across its ecosystem, including search, Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube.

Google's Gemini model, initially scheduled for release in June, has yet to be unveiled, while competitors have introduced more powerful models, particularly in generating computer code – a lucrative area in the sector. Facing this technological gap, Google's focus has shifted to integrating AI into its existing platforms, relying on the one billion users as its main asset.

OpenAI, the San Francisco-based lab behind ChatGPT, reached one billion users in July, sparking the AI boom when it launched its free app in November 2022. OpenAI's user base, built from scratch in under four years, now fuels its hopes for an eventual IPO. As competition intensifies with rivals like China's DeepSeek and Anthropic, which powers Claude, ChatGPT's market share for AI assistants has fallen below 50 percent in the first half of the year, according to research firm Sensor Tower.