MARCH 18: In this photo illustration, Gemini Ai is seen on a phone on March 18, 2024 in New York City. Apple announced that they’re exploring a partnership with Google to license the Gemini AI-powered features on iPhones with iOS updates later this year. Google already has a deal in place with Apple to be the preferred search engine provider on iPhones for the Safari browser. (Photo Illustration by Michael M. Santiago/
WASHINGTON (TNND) —Google has found its next billion-user product, and it didn’t take long. The company said Aug. 11 that Gemini has topped 1 billion monthly active users, making the AI assistant the 14th Google product to cross that threshold and its fastest-growing product ever
Gemini has grown rapidly, rising from about 750 million monthly users earlier this year to 950 million in July and then 1 billion in August. Google’s figure refers to the Gemini app and related Gemini experiences, rather than everyone who encounters Google’s AI through other products such as Search. Google also said more than 100 million of Gemini’s monthly active users are on Apple devices.
ChatGPT reached the 1 billion monthly-user milestone earlier. Data from market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower showed that ChatGPT reached 1 billion monthly active app users in May 2026. OpenAI later said ChatGPT had surpassed 1 billion weekly active users in July, and publicly highlighted that milestone on Aug. 6
The figures should not be treated as identical measures. Google is reporting monthly active users for Gemini, while OpenAI has emphasized weekly active users for ChatGPT. OpenAI had reported 900 million weekly active users in February.
Supporting AI at this scale is also expensive. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, generated about $39.1 billion in operating cash flow in the second quarter but spent about $44.9 billion on capital expenditures, much of it tied to the infrastructure needed to support its AI and cloud businesses. That resulted in approximately $5.8 billion in negative free cash flow, the company’s first negative quarter on that measure as a public company. The figure does not mean Alphabet stopped generating cash; its operations still produced substantial cash.
The significance of the milestones goes beyond the number of users. Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies are increasingly competing over how often people use their assistants, what those systems can do, their integration into everyday products and businesses, and how the companies turn enormous user bases into sustainable revenue.
With Gemini now above 1 billion monthly users and ChatGPT above 1 billion weekly users, AI assistants have reached a scale once associated mainly with the world’s largest internet platforms.
