How Google overtook OpenAI in 2025 with Gemini, chips, and huge user growth
2025 turned into a breakthrough year for Google in the global AI race. Powered by Gemini 3, strong Google Cloud growth, huge enterprise adoption, chip partnerships, and deep AI integration across products, Google surged ahead of OpenAI. The year ends with Google leading user momentum, ecosystem strength, and AI industry influence.
New Delhi: 2025 turned into a surprising year in the AI race. Many in the industry began the year believing OpenAI still set the pace. Google had been viewed as slower and more cautious, especially after ChatGPT changed the direction of global AI. But as the year moved forward, Google quietly shifted gears. By the end of 2025, the story sounded very different, with Google suddenly leading conversations, products, user momentum, chip deals, and enterprise growth.
At one point, it even felt strange to hear OpenAI CEO Sam Altman call a "code red” after Google launched Gemini 3, when it was Google that once declared its own code red after ChatGPT arrived in 2022. That reversal says a lot about how big Google’s comeback has been this year.
Gemini 3 changed the tone of the AI race
Gemini 3 was the biggest turning point. When it launched in November, it quickly became the most talked about AI model of the year and even unseated GPT-5.1 in several categories. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff publicly praised it, saying he was switching to Gemini 3 after using it. The app already reaches around 650 million monthly users and grows rapidly.
What gave Google a real edge was reach. Gemini now lives inside Google Search, Gmail, Drive, Android, Chrome, Maps and YouTube. That means billions of users can touch AI without downloading anything. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai also said more than 70 percent of Google Cloud customers are already using its AI services. "Our complete enterprise AI product portfolio is accelerating growth in revenue, operating margins, and backlog,” he said.
Hardware, chips and enterprise strength
Google also won big on AI hardware. Anthropic expanded its use of Google AI chips with plans to power software with up to one million processors, and Google is reportedly in talks with Meta to supply chips too. At the same time, Google Cloud Platform revenue grew 34 percent in Q3 2025 to 15.1 billion dollars, driven heavily by AI adoption.
Google’s AI Mode rolled out to users in Search, AI ads began testing, and its viral Nano Banana AI image app helped attract younger users. Meanwhile, self driving taxis - Waymo expanded to more US cities and Gemini became deeply tied to daily Google products.
OpenAI still has huge reach with 800 million weekly users, but only a fraction pay. It is now preparing to run ads in ChatGPT as it chases profitability and long term infrastructure spending. Google, meanwhile, already blends AI across multiple profitable ecosystems.
By the end of 2025, the AI race feels different. Google not only caught up, it managed to push ahead in scale, enterprise strength, and product ecosystem, setting up a powerful lead heading into 2026.