It is also facing a resurgent Google, with the release last week of Gemini 3<\/a>, Google\u2019s latest large language model, which is considered to have leapfrogged OpenAI\u2019s GPT-5 and achieved gains from the model training process that have eluded OpenAI in recent months. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s quite a strong difference with the world we had two years ago where OpenAI was leading ahead of everyone else,\u201d said Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of open-source start-up Hugging Face. \u201cIt\u2019s a new world.\u201d <\/p>\n Even before the launch of Gemini 3, OpenAI\u2019s chief Sam Altman told staff in a memo last month that the company would \u201cneed to stay focused through short-term competitive pressure\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009expect the vibes out there to be rough for a bit\u201d. The memo was first reported by The Information.<\/p>\n A year ago many had written off Google\u2019s flailing efforts to narrow OpenAI\u2019s colossal lead. Fears that its cash-cow search engine would be cannibalised by ChatGPT and other new AI powered search apps such as Perplexity left parent company Alphabet\u2019s stock price lagging far behind its Big Tech rivals in the AI-driven rally through 2023 and 2024. <\/p>\n But Google\u2019s turnaround began earlier this year, after a confident slate of updates at its IO developer conference<\/a> in May and the viral popularity of its Nano Banana AI photo-editing tool this summer. This helped boost monthly users of the Gemini mobile app to 650mn, up from about 400mn in May.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The developments have seen Alphabet\u2019s shares surge<\/a> in recent months, with its market capitalisation now approaching $4tn for the first time, amid confidence on Wall Street that Google can combine its dominant positions in search, cloud infrastructure and smartphones to serve new AI capabilities to billions of existing users. <\/p>\n Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google\u2019s AI architect and DeepMind\u2019s chief technology officer, told the Financial Times that the Big Tech group had \u201cpushed our performance quite significantly\u201d by training its AI models using Google\u2019s own bespoke chips. <\/p>\n \u201cBeing able to connect with consumers, customers, companies, at that scale is really something that we can do because of that full stack integrated approach that we have,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n That \u201cfull stack\u201d includes its custom tensor processing unit chips, which allowed Google to train Gemini 3 without needing to rely on the costly Nvidia chips that most of the AI industry uses. \u201cI think we have a unique approach there,\u201d said Kavukcuoglu. <\/p>\n Google \u201calways had these muscles to flex\u201d, said Michael Nathanson, co-founder and analyst at MoffettNathanson, an equity research firm, adding that the IO event showed that \u201cthey really managed to find their product footing\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cThe pressure has definitely flipped to Sam Altman and his ability to monetise and keep all the plates spinning,\u201d said Nathanson. <\/p>\n AI researchers and users have been quick to praise Google\u2019s advancements. The model outperformed GPT-5 on several key benchmarks. <\/p>\n Marc Benioff, Salesforce chief executive, said in a post on X: \u201cHoly shit. I\u2019ve used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I\u2019m not going back. The leap is insane\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009It feels like the world just changed, again.\u201d<\/p>\n Publicly, OpenAI has welcomed the competition. \u201cWe\u2019re always excited to see progress in the field \u2014 competition pushes the whole ecosystem forward,\u201d said Mark Chen, OpenAI\u2019s chief research officer. <\/p>\n \u201cOur models continue to set the standard in performance, reliability, and real-world usefulness, and we will continue to release even more capable models,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n But internally employees are feeling pressure to compete on multiple fronts with deep-pocketed rivals with tens of billions of dollars to throw at building AI. \u201cThe arc of any fast-growing start-up is not just going to be up and the right,\u201d said one person close to the company. <\/p>\n Some experts say OpenAI has overextended itself in its pursuit of scale at all costs. The group has spent the past year pushing out new products at a breakneck pace, from automated computer programming tools to its viral video app Sora. <\/p>\n \u201cOpenAI is getting spread too thin. It\u2019s impossible for them to do it all well,\u201d said a partner at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has backed several AI model developers but not OpenAI. <\/p>\n The San Francisco-based company has pledged<\/a> to spend $1.4tn over the next eight years on computing power, striking huge deals with Nvidia, Oracle, AMD and Broadcom. That is orders of magnitude more than OpenAI\u2019s current sales, requiring its partners to use debt to finance the build-out. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a really, really tremendously risky bet for any company to make,\u201d said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, a non-profit. <\/p>\n OpenAI\u2019s biggest challenge is finding a big enough revenue stream to sustain that extraordinary investment. <\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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Koray Kavukcuoglu said Google had a \u2018unique approach\u2019 \u00a9 Google<\/p>\n![\"Line](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/https:\/\/d6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net\/prod\/16083c10-cc4a-11f0-9344-371c79f679f7-standard.png\")
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