Google has officially transitioned from an AI laggard to a dominant industry leader, reporting record-breaking financial results that signal a major turning point in its rivalry with OpenAI. On February 4, 2026, Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., announced that its annual revenue exceeded $400 billion for the first time in its history. This milestone was driven by a massive 48% surge in Google Cloud revenue, which reached $17.7 billion in the final quarter of 2025 as enterprises flocked to Google’s integrated AI infrastructure.
The rapid ascent is anchored by the successful rollout of Gemini 3, which CEO Sundar Pichai described as the fastest-adopted model in the company’s history. The Gemini app has reached 750 million monthly active users, a significant jump from 650 million in the previous quarter. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT still maintains a lead with an estimated 810 million monthly users, analysts from Emarketer suggest that Google is on a clear trajectory to overtake OpenAI for the top spot later this year. The integration of Gemini into Apple’s Siri, providing AI services to over 2.5 billion active devices, has further solidified Google’s position as the world’s primary “AI engine.”
To maintain this momentum, Alphabet has announced an unprecedented capital expenditure plan of up to $185 billion for 2026, nearly doubling its 2025 spending. This investment is being funneled into a “full AI stack,” including next-generation Ironwood TPU accelerators designed to reduce reliance on third-party chips and lower the cost of running massive generative models. Despite the high costs, the company reported a quarterly profit of $34.5 billion, proving that its core advertising business—which generated $82.3 billion in the same period—is more than capable of financing its aggressive AI expansion.
Google’s resurgence has shifted the narrative on Wall Street, where the company was once criticized for being slow to react to the rise of generative AI. Today, the deep integration of Gemini across Search, Workspace, and Android is driving higher user engagement and a more diverse revenue stream than its competitors. As OpenAI faces internal challenges and senior-level departures, Google’s ability to pair cutting-edge research with a massive, pre-existing distribution network has allowed it to seize the leadership mantle in the global AI race.
