Google’s AI chatbot Gemini has surpassed 400 million monthly active users, marking a significant milestone in the race against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which currently leads with 600 million users. The update was shared by Google CEO Sundar Pichai during a media briefing ahead of Google I/O 2025.
The user growth underscores Gemini’s rapid rise in the generative AI space, narrowing the gap with ChatGPT, which has long dominated the conversation. Just months ago, Gemini’s user base was estimated at 350 million, but the latest figures show that Google’s strategic push is paying off.
As part of its AI leadership overhaul, Google appointed Josh Woodward, known for developing NotebookLM, as the new head of Gemini. This leadership change is aimed at turning Gemini into a cultural phenomenon on par with ChatGPT, sparking greater public engagement and adoption.
But Google’s AI ambitions go beyond Gemini. Pichai revealed that AI-powered overviews in Google Search are now being accessed by more than 1.5 billion people each month, as Google transforms Search into an interactive, multimodal experience. Users will soon be able to get AI-driven answers using visual inputs, shopping preferences, and even study plans, making Search more personalised and proactive.
In tandem with these upgrades, Google introduced a premium offering, the AI Ultra Plan. Priced at $249.99/month, it includes early access to Gemini’s most advanced models, such as Deep Think for complex reasoning tasks, 30TB of Google Cloud storage, and an ad-free YouTube experience. This plan competes with similar premium subscriptions from OpenAI and Anthropic, which start around $200/month.
Despite the high cost, Pichai stressed that building and running advanced AI tools requires significant investment. Google has over 150 million paying subscribers across its AI and cloud services, with price points ranging from $19.99 to $249.99/month.
The competitive pressure isn’t limited to OpenAI. Meta is also scaling fast in the AI domain. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta AI tools now serve over one billion users across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and the company has launched its own standalone AI chatbot app.
