{"id":405461,"date":"2025-11-26T07:40:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T07:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/405461\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T07:40:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T07:40:14","slug":"google-the-sleeping-giant-in-global-ai-race-now-fully-awake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/405461\/","title":{"rendered":"Google, the\u00a0sleeping giant in global AI race, now \u2018fully awake\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the launch of ChatGPT three years ago, analysts and technologists \u2014\u00a0even\u00a0a Google engineer<\/a>\u00a0and the company\u2019s\u00a0former chief executive<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0have declared Google<\/a> behind in the high-stakes race to develop artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Not anymore.<\/p>\n

The internet giant has released new AI software and struck deals, such as\u00a0a chip tie-up<\/a>\u00a0with Anthropic PBC, that have reassured investors the company won\u2019t easily lose\u00a0to ChatGPT creator\u00a0OpenAI and other rivals. Google\u2019s newest multi-purpose model,\u00a0Gemini 3<\/a>, won immediate praise for its capabilities in\u00a0reasoning and coding, as well as niche tasks that have tripped up\u00a0AI chatbots. Google\u2019s cloud business, once an also-ran, is growing steadily, thanks in part to the global rush to develop AI services\u00a0and demand for compute.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0there are signs of rising demand for\u00a0Google\u2019s specialized AI chips, one of the few viable alternatives to\u00a0Nvidia<\/a> Corp.\u2019s dominant gear.\u00a0A report on Monday that Meta Platforms<\/a> Inc. is in talks to use Google\u2019s chips sent shares of its parent Alphabet Inc. soaring. The stock has added nearly $1 trillion in market capitalization since mid-October,\u00a0helped by Warren Buffett taking a\u00a0$4.9 billion stake<\/a>\u00a0during the third quarter and broader Wall Street enthusiasm for its AI efforts.<\/p>\n

Google owner Alphabet Inc.\u2019s\u00a0shares rose as much as 3.22% in New York on Tuesday.\u00a0The company is on track to hit a $4 trillion market capitalization for the first time.<\/p>\n

SoftBank Group<\/a>, one of OpenAI\u2019s biggest backers,\u00a0fell to a two-month low<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday on worries about the competition from Google\u2019s Gemini. Nvidia shares fell as much as 5.51% on Tuesday, erasing $243 billion in market value.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoogle has arguably always been the dark horse\u00a0in this AI race,\u201d said Neil Shah, analyst and cofounder at Counterpoint Research. It\u2019s\u00a0\u201ca\u00a0sleeping giant that is now fully awake.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years, Google executives have argued that deep, costly research would help the company\u00a0fend off rivals, defend its turf as the leading search engine and invent the computing platforms of tomorrow. Then ChatGPT came along, presenting the first real threat to Google search in years, even though Google pioneered the tech\u00a0underpinning OpenAI\u2019s chatbot.\u00a0Still, Google has plenty of resources that OpenAI doesn\u2019t: a corpus of ready data to train and refine AI models; flowing profits; and its own computing infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve taken a full, deep, full-stack approach to AI,\u201d Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer for Google and Alphabet, told investors last quarter. \u201cAnd that really plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any concerns that Google might be held back by regulators are dying away. The company recently\u00a0avoided the most severe outcome<\/a>\u00a0from a US anti-monopoly case \u2014\u00a0a breakup of its business \u2014 in part because of the perceived threat\u00a0from AI newcomers.\u00a0And the search giant has shown some progress in the\u00a0longtime effort to diversify beyond its core business.\u00a0Waymo, Alphabet\u2019s driverless car unit, is coming to several new cities and just added freeway driving to its taxi service, a feat made possible by the company\u2019s enormous research and investment.<\/p>\n

Some of Google\u2019s edge comes from its economics. It\u2019s one of the few companies that produces\u00a0what the industry calls the full stack\u00a0in computing. Google makes the AI apps people use, like its popular Nano Banana image generator, as well as the software models, the cloud computing architecture\u00a0and the chips underneath. The company also has a data\u00a0goldmine for constructing\u00a0AI models\u00a0from its search index, Android phones and YouTube<\/a> \u2014\u00a0data that Google\u00a0often keeps for itself<\/a>. That means, in theory, Google has more control over the technical direction of AI products and doesn\u2019t necessarily have to pay suppliers, unlike OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Several tech companies, including Microsoft<\/a> Corp. and OpenAI, have plotted ways to develop their own semiconductors or forge ties that make them less reliant on Nvidia\u2019s bestsellers.\u00a0For years, Google was effectively its own sole customer for its homegrown processors, called tensor processing units, or TPUs, which the company first designed more than a decade ago to speed up the generation of search results and has since adapted to handle\u00a0complex AI tasks. That\u2019s changing. AI startup Anthropic\u00a0said in October<\/a>\u00a0said it would\u00a0use as many as 1 million Google\u00a0TPUs in a deal worth tens of billions of dollars.<\/p>\n

On Monday, tech publication\u00a0the Information\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Meta planned to use Google\u2019s chips in its data centers in 2027. Google declined to address the specific plans, but said that its cloud business is \u201caccelerating demand\u201d for both its custom TPUs and Nvidia\u2019s graphics processing units. \u201cWe are committed to supporting both, as we have for years,\u201d a\u00a0spokesperson wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n

Meta declined to comment on the report on Monday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re delighted by Google\u2019s success,\u201d a spokesperson for Nvidia said in a statement Tuesday. \u201cThey\u2019ve made great advances in AI, and we continue to supply to Google.\u201d The spokesperson added: \u201cNvidia\u00a0is a generation ahead of the industry \u2013 it\u2019s the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Analysts read the Meta news as a signal of Google\u2019s success.\u00a0\u201cMany others have failed in their quest to build custom chips, but Google can clearly add another string to its bow here,\u201d Ben Barringer, head of technology research for Quilter Cheviot, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

Google has taken risks to get here.\u00a0In early 2023, Google consolidated its AI efforts under Demis Hassabis, the leader of its London AI lab DeepMind<\/a>. The reshuffle had some bumps,\u00a0most notably\u00a0a botched rollout<\/a>\u00a0of an image-generation product.\u00a0For several years, DeepMind pursued research in areas like protein-folding that led to new commercial strategies\u00a0(and a\u00a0Nobel prize<\/a>)\u00a0but contributed little to Google\u2019s bottom line. Under the reorganization, the AI unit is focused almost squarely on foundational models that keep pace\u00a0with OpenAI, Microsoft and others.<\/p>\n

Hassabis, a renowned computer scientist, has helped retain key AI engineers despite multimillion-dollar\u00a0offers from rivals. His boss, Pichai, has been\u00a0willing to splurge<\/a>\u00a0on talent.<\/p>\n

Gemini 3 Pro\u00a0has risen to the top of closely watched AI leaderboards on LMArena and Humanity\u2019s Last Exam.\u00a0Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0it\u2019s \u201cclearly a tier 1 LLM,\u201d referring to large language models. Google pitched the model as one that can solve complex science and math problems, and address nagging issues \u2014 such as\u00a0generating images<\/a>\u00a0and overlaid text with incorrect spelling \u2014\u00a0that might deter enterprise customers from adopting AI services more widely.<\/p>\n

Consumer interest is harder to gauge. Google said last week that 650 million people use its Gemini app. OpenAI recently said ChatGPT hit 800 million weekly users.\u00a0As of October, Gemini\u2019s app\u00a0had 73 million monthly downloads, well shy of ChatGPT\u2019s 93 million monthly downloads, according to research firm Sensor Tower.<\/p>\n

Google is an advertising behemoth, but it has\u00a0historically struggled to find\u00a0other commercial models. Its\u00a0cloud business reported third-quarter revenue of\u00a0$15.2 billion, up 34% from the prior year. Still, that\u00a0remains in third-place behind Microsoft and Amazon<\/a> Web Services, which posted more than double Google\u2019s cloud sales in the most recent quarter. Counterpoint Research\u2019s Shah\u00a0said Google\u2019s AI adoption with enterprises lags\u00a0Microsoft and Anthropic.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0OpenAI is targeting profits by\u00a0selling a premium version of ChatGPT and adjacent software to companies. It\u2019s\u00a0cutting<\/a>\u00a0deals with chipmakers from Broadcom<\/a> Inc. to Advanced Micro Devices<\/a> Inc. to Nvidia to support its AI ambitions.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s TPUs are mostly attractive to a handful of companies with big computing bills, like Meta and Anthropic,\u00a0 said\u00a0Meryem Arik, CEO of the AI startup Doubleword.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0the chip industry is \u201cnot a zero-sum game with just one winner,\u201d\u00a0said Barringer.<\/p>\n

For one,\u00a0AI developers can only access Google\u2019s chips through the company\u2019s own cloud service. They can use Nvidia\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0graphics processing units, or GPUs, more flexibly.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAs soon as you use TPUs, you\u2019re locked into\u201d the Google cloud\u00a0ecosystem,\u00a0said Arik.<\/p>\n

Being tied to a single supplier might have been something companies avoided. That\u2019s no longer the case for Google, thanks to its advances in AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely fair to say that Google is back in the game with Gemini 3,\u201d said Thomas Husson, analyst at Forrester. \u201cIn fact, to paraphrase a quote attributed to Mark Twain, reports of Google\u2019s death have been widely exaggerated, not to say irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the launch of ChatGPT three years ago, analysts and technologists \u2014\u00a0even\u00a0a Google engineer\u00a0and the company\u2019s\u00a0former chief executive\u00a0\u2014\u00a0have…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":405462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,2722,135,1671,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-405461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-google","10":"tag-markets","11":"tag-nvidia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115614870641927789","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}