Gemini AI reaches one billion monthly users

Google's Gemini artificial intelligence assistant has surpassed one billion monthly users, CEO Sundar Pichai said on Aug. 11.

Pichai said on social media that Gemini was Google's fastest-growing product and the company's 14th product to reach one billion users. Google calculated the figure from use of the Gemini app across its ecosystem.

The milestone gives Google a major audience figure as it reorganises its AI division. Demis Hassabis, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, recently stepped back from day-to-day management of Google DeepMind, the lab that designs the Gemini models. Several senior researchers have also left, including Jeff Dean, described as a central figure in the group's engineering work for nearly three decades.

Google's new flagship model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, which had initially been promised for June, has not yet been released. Google is integrating AI across services including search, Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube.

OpenAI announced in July that it had reached one billion users across all its interfaces, led by ChatGPT, but did not specify whether the figure was monthly or weekly. Research firm Sensor Tower said ChatGPT's market share for AI assistants fell below 50 percent in the first half of the year.