Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks in conversation with Emily Chang during the APEC CEO Summit at Moscone West on November 16, 2023 in San Francisco, California. The APEC summit is being held in San Francisco and runs through November 17.
Google is launching what it considers its largest and most capable artificial intelligence model Wednesday as pressure mounts on the company to answer how it’ll monetize AI.
The large language model Gemini will include a suite of three different sizes: Gemini Ultra, its largest, most capable category; Gemini Pro, which scales across a wide range of tasks; and Gemini Nano, which it will use for specific tasks and mobile devices.
For now, the company is planning to license Gemini to customers through Google Cloud for them to use in their own applications. Starting Dec. 13, developers and enterprise customers can access Gemini Pro via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio or Google Cloud Vertex AI. Android developers will also be able to build with Gemini Nano. Gemini will also be used to power Google products like its Bard chatbot and Search Generative Experience, which tries to answer search queries with conversational-style text (SGE is not widely available yet).
Gemini Ultra is the first model to outperform human experts on MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), which uses a combination of 57 subjects such as math, physics, history, law, medicine and ethics for testing both world knowledge and problem-solving abilities, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. It can supposedly understand nuance and reasoning in complex subjects.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Google I/O Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, US, on Wednesday, May 10, 2023.
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“Gemini is the result of large-scale collaborative efforts by teams across Google, including our colleagues at Google Research,” wrote CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post Wednesday. “It was built from the ground up to be multimodal, which means it can generalize and seamlessly understand, operate across and combine different types of information including text, code, audio, image and video.”
Starting today, Google’s chatbot Bard will use Gemini Pro to help with advanced reasoning, planning, understanding and other capabilities. Early next year, it will launch “Bard Advanced,” which will use Gemini Ultra, executives said on a call with reporters Tuesday. It represents the biggest update to Bard, its ChatGPT-like chatbot.
The update comes eight months after the search giant first launched Bard and one year after OpenAI launched ChatGPT on GPT-3.5. In March of this year, the Sam Altman-led startup launched GPT-4. Executives said Tuesday that Gemini Pro outperformed GPT-3.5 but dodged questions about how it stacked up against GPT-4.
When asked if Google has plans to charge for access to “Bard Advanced,” Google’s general manager for Bard, Sissie Hsiao, said it is focused on creating a good experience and doesn’t have any monetization details yet.
When asked on a press briefing if Gemini has any novel capabilities compared with current generation LLMs, Eli Collins, vice president of product at Google DeepMind, answered, “I suspect it does” but that it’s still working to understand Gemini Ultra’s novel capabilities.
Google reportedly postponed the launch of Gemini because it wasn’t ready, bringing back memories of the company’s rocky rollout of its AI tools at the beginning of the year.
Multiple reporters asked about the delay, to which Collins answered that testing the more advanced models take longer. Collins said Gemini is the most highly tested AI model that the company’s built and that it has “the most comprehensive safety evaluations” of any Google model.
Collins said that despite being its largest model, Gemini Ultra is significantly cheaper to serve. “It’s not just more capable, it’s more efficient,” he said. “We still require significant compute to train Gemini but we’re getting much more efficient in terms of our ability to train these models.”
Collins said the company will release a technical white paper with more details of the model on Wednesday but said it won’t be releasing the perimeter count. Earlier this year, CNBC found Google’s PaLM 2 large language model, its latest AI model at the time, used nearly five times the amount of text data for training as its predecessor LLM.
Also on Wednesday, Google introduced its next-generation tensor processing unit for training AI models. The TPU v5p chip, which Salesforce and startup Lightricks have begun using, offers better performance for the price than the TPU v4 announced in 2021, Google said. But the company didn’t provide information on performance compared with market leader Nvidia.
The chip announcement comes weeks after cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft showed off custom silicon targeting AI.
During Google’s third-quarter earnings conference call in October, investors asked executives more questions about how it’s going to turn AI into actual profit.
In August, Google launched an “early experiment” called Search Generative Experience, or SGE, which lets users see what a generative AI experience would look like when using the search engine — search is still a major profit center for the company. The result is more conversational, reflecting the age of chatbots. However, it is still considered an experiment and has yet to launch to the general public.
Investors have been asking for a timeline for SGE since May, when the company first announced the experiment at its annual developer conference Google I/O. The Gemini announcement Wednesday hardly mentioned SGE and executives were vague about its plans to launch to the general public, saying that Gemini would be incorporated into it “in the next year.”
“This new era of models represents one of the biggest science and engineering efforts we’ve undertaken as a company,” Pichai said in Wednesday’s blog post. “I’m genuinely excited for what’s ahead, and for the opportunities Gemini will unlock for people everywhere.”
Employees stand near an The Amazon Inc. logo is displayed above the reception counter at the company’s campus in Hyderabad, India, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2019.
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Amazon on Wednesday committed to investing over $35 billion in India’s cloud and artificial intelligence space by 2030, as hyperscalers race to get a foothold in the market.
The commitment, unveiled at the Amazon Smbhav Summit in New Delhi, builds on nearly $40 billion already invested in the country.
In a press release, Amazon said the new funds will target AI-driven digitization, export growth and job creation, aligning with India’s national priorities to build up its local AI environment.
By 2030, Amazon said the plan is expected to generate an additional 1 million direct, indirect, induced and seasonal jobs in India, quadruple exports to $80 billion and deliver AI benefits to 15 million small businesses.
The investment highlights Amazon’s bet on India’s booming digital economy, where it has been building fulfillment centers, data centers and payments infrastructure.
It also comes soon after Microsoft announced plans to invest $17.5 billion in India’s AI infrastructure as Big Tech players accelerate their push into the market.
“We are humbled to have been a part of India’s digital transformation journey over the past 15 years,” said Amit Agarwal, senior vice president for emerging markets at Amazon.
“Looking ahead, we’re excited to continue being a catalyst for India’s growth, as we democratize access to AI for millions of Indians.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appears at an event with tech CEOs and senior officials, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the East Room of the White House in Washington on June 22, 2023.
Chris Kleponis | CNP | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft on Tuesday announced it would invest $17.5 billion in India’s cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure, making it the U.S. tech giant’s largest investment in Asia.
The company said that the investments, aimed at expanding hyperscale infrastructure, embedding AI into national platforms, and advancing workforce readiness, will be spread over 4 years, building on its $3 billion pledge made in January.
The announcement follows a meeting between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in which the two discussed India’s AI ambitions. Modi met with other tech CEOs on Tuesday too including Intel‘s Lip-Bu Tan.
In a post on social media, Nadella thanked Modi and said that Microsoft’s investments would “help build the infrastructure, skills, and sovereign capabilities needed for India’s AI first future.”
The move comes as India attempts to catch up on AI, with Modi emphasizing building a comprehensive tech ecosystem and AI sovereignty. The country has also recently attracted data center investment pledges of $15 billion from Google and $8 billion from Amazon Web Services.
“The youth of India will harness this opportunity to innovate and leverage the power of AI for a better planet,” Modi said in a post on X, referring to Microsoft’s investment.
Microsoft plans to use the funds to scale up its existing cloud and AI infrastructure to serve customers across regions in India. It now provides “Sovereign Public Cloud” and “Sovereign Private Cloud” services in several regions.
The company added that it was doubling its January commitment to train 20 million Indians in AI by 2030, with hopes to grow and skill its more than 22,000 employees in the country.
Microsoft also announced on Tuesday that it would be integrating its Azure AI capabilities into two key digital public platforms of India’s Ministry of Labour and Employment and the National Career Service.
India’s Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw called the investment a signal of India’s rise as a reliable global technology partner, accelerating the shift from digital to AI public infrastructure.
While India lags far behind global leaders in advanced technologies like chips and AI, the country’s massive consumer market and public funding have attracted major tech players.
Under its “India Semiconductor Mission,” the country has approved 10 chip projects with total investments of over $18 billion.
On Monday, American chip designer Intel signed a deal with Mumbai-based Tata Electronics aimed at collaborating on chip offerings in the country, including on products for AI applications.
An eagle is seen framed though construction fence on the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building, the main offices of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on September 16, 2025 in Washington, DC, U.S.
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On Wednesday stateside, the U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to lower its benchmark interest rates by a quarter percentage point to a range of 3.5%-3.75%.
However, given that traders are all but certain that the cut will happen — an 88.6% chance, to be exact, according to the CME FedWatch tool — the news is likely already priced into stocks by the market.
That means any whiff of restraint could weigh on equities. In fact, the talk in the markets is that the Fed might deliver a “hawkish cut”: lower rates while suggesting it could be a while before it cuts again.
The “dot plot,” or a projection of where Fed officials think interest rates will end up over the next few years, will be the clearest signal of any hawkishness. Investors will also parse Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference and central bankers’ estimates for U.S. economic growth and inflation to gauge the Fed’s future rate path.
In other words, the Fed could rein in market sentiment even if it cuts rates. Perhaps end-of-year festivities might be muted this year.
