Google's Gemini AI assistant has surpassed 950 million monthly active users, putting it on course to join the company's list of billion-user products alongside Search, Gmail, Drive, Android, YouTube and Chrome. The milestone, disclosed during Alphabet's Q2 2026 earnings call, underscores how quickly Google has scaled its AI offering to challenge OpenAI's ChatGPT, which reached 1 billion monthly users in June, and reflects a broader shift in Google's strategy towards embedding AI more deeply across its products.

Gemini's user base has tripled over the past year, having already reached 750 million monthly active users in February. Growth has been bolstered by strong iOS uptake, with over 137 million downloads in the past 12 months aided by features such as the Nano Banana image generation model, alongside agentic tools like Daily Brief and the Gemini Spark personalised agent. Separately, analytics firm Sensor Tower reported that ChatGPT's market share among AI assistants fell below 50% for the first time in H1 2026, while Gemini's share climbed to 27.7%; Google also said its AI-powered Search mode has now crossed 1 billion users.