Google’s Gemini 3 Release Won Over More Than 100 Million New Active Users

Google’s AI assistant Gemini App now has more than 750 million monthly active users, CEO Sundar Pichai said at parent company Alphabet’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

That’s roughly 100 million more users than the 650 million monthly active users the company reported in its third-quarter earnings report. That report was released just three weeks before the company’s Gemini 3 debut upended the AI world.

“We are also seeing significantly higher engagement per user, especially since the launch of Gemini 3,” Pichai said. “[Gemini 3] has seen the fastest adoption of any model in our history.”

Google’s AI story experienced a major turnaround in mid-November thanks to Gemini 3, the company’s latest AI model. AI enthusiasts praised the capabilities of the model far and wide on social media, with even some long-time ChatGPT fanboys like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff admitting to converting to Gemini. AI benchmarking firm LMArena’s cofounder Wei-Lin Chiang even called the release “more than a leaderboard shuffle.”

Gemini 3 was so well-received that only a couple of weeks later, OpenAI leadership declared “code red” at the company. Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company has significant business with OpenAI, reportedly raised worries over the competition Google now poses to OpenAI’s market dominance.

Despite the huge jump in users for Gemini, there might still be a long way to go until it can suprpass ChatGPT to become the chatbot leader. OpenAI doesn’t report regular data on ChatGPT active users, but a The Information report from December claimed that ChatGPT was nearing 900 million users weekly at the time.

Either way, Google’s catch-up effort is impressive. With high-profile launches like Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro, Google has been able to save its once-battered AI reputation following the failed launch of Gemini image generation in early 2024.

“I think we are in a very, very relentless innovation cadence, and I think we are confident about maintaining that momentum as we go through ’26,” Pichai said in the earnings call. Executives shared that they are planning to double capital expenditures in 2026, with the majority going towards AI.

Google has big plans for Gemini this year. Apple recently tapped Gemini to power its AI revamp of Siri that is set to launch later this year, and Samsung announced last month that it was planning to double the amount of its Gemini-infused mobile devices. The company is also preparing to make Gemini more “shoppable” with checkout experiences infused directly into the app.

You might also want to start preparing to have your Gemini chats plagued by ads, but that might still be further on the horizon.

“Ads have always been part of scaling products to reach billions of people,” Google’s chief business officer Philipp Schindler said. “But as we’ve said, we’re not rushing anything here.”