Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at the Google I/O developer conference.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Google on Tuesday hosted its annual I/O developer conference, and rolled out a range of artificial intelligence products, from new search and chat features to AI hardware for cloud customers. The announcements underscore the company’s focus on AI as it fends off competitors, such as OpenAI.
Many of the features or tools Google unveiled are only in a testing phase or limited to developers, but they give an idea of how the tech giant is thinking about AI and where it’s investing. Google makes money from AI by charging developers who use its models and from customers who pay for Gemini Advanced, its competitor to ChatGPT, which costs $19.99 per month and can help users summarize PDFs, Google Docs and more.
Tuesday’s announcements follow similar events held by its AI competitors. Earlier this month, Amazon-backed Anthropic announced its first-ever enterprise offering and a free iPhone app. Meanwhile, OpenAIon Monday launched a new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT, along with a new user interface.
Here’s what Google announced.
Gemini AI updates
Google introduced updates to Gemini 1.5 Pro, its AI model that will soon be able to handle even more data — for example, the tool can summarize 1,500 pages of text uploaded by a user.
There’s also a new Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model, which the company said is more cost-effective and designed for smaller tasks like quickly summarizing conversations, captioning images and videos and pulling data from large documents.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted improvements to Gemini’s translations, adding that it will be available to all developers worldwide in 35 languages. Within Gmail, Gemini 1.5 Pro will analyze attached PDFs and videos, giving summaries and more, Pichai said. That means that if you missed a long email thread on vacation, Gemini will be able to summarize it along with any attachments.
The new Gemini updates are also helpful for searching Gmail. One example the company gave: If you’ve been comparing prices from different contractors to fix your roof and are looking for a summary to help you decide who to pick, Gemini could return three quotes along with the anticipated start dates offered in the different email threads.
Google said Gemini will eventually replace Google Assistant on Android phones, suggesting it’s going to be a more powerful competitor to Apple’s Siri on iPhone.
Google Veo, Imagen 3 and Audio Overviews
Google announced “Veo,” its latest model for generating high-definition video, and Imagen 3, its highest quality text-to-image model, which promises lifelike images and “fewer distracting visual artifacts than our prior models.”
The tools will be available for select creators on Monday and will come to Vertex AI, Google’s machine learning platform that lets developers train and deploy AI applications.
The company also showcased “Audio Overviews,” the ability to generate audio discussions based on text input. For instance, if a user uploads a lesson plan, the chatbot can speak a summary of it. Or, if you ask for an example of a science problem in real life, it can do so through interactive audio.
Separately, the company also showcased “AI Sandbox,” a range of generative AI tools for creating music and sounds from scratch, based on user prompts.
Generative AI tools such as chatbots and image creators continue to have issues with accuracy, however.
Google search boss Prabhakar Raghavan told employees last month that competitors “may have a new gizmo out there that people like to play with, but they still come to Google to verify what they see there because it is the trusted source, and it becomes more critical in this era of generative AI.”
Earlier this year, Google introduced the Gemini-powered image generator. Users discovered historical inaccuracies that went viral online, and the company pulled the feature, saying it would relaunch it in the coming weeks. The feature has still not been re-released.
New search features
The tech giant is launching “AI Overviews” in Google Search on Monday in the U.S. AI Overviews show a quick summary of answers to the most complex search questions, according to Liz Reid, head of Google Search. For example, if a user searches for the best way to clean leather boots, the results page may display an “AI Overview” at the top with a multi-step cleaning process, gleaned from information it synthesized from around the web.
The company said it plans to introduce assistant-like planning capabilities directly within search. It explained that users will be able to search for something like, “‘Create a 3-day meal plan for a group that’s easy to prepare,'” and you’ll get a starting point with a wide range of recipes from across the web.
As far as its progress to offer “multimodality,” or integrating more images and video within generative AI tools, Google said it will begin testing the ability for users to ask questions through video, such as filming a problem with a product they own, uploading it and asking the search engine to figure out the problem. In one example, Google showed someone filming a broken record player while asking why it wasn’t working. Google Search found the model of the record player and suggested that it could be malfunctioning because it wasn’t properly balanced.
Another new feature being tested is called “AI Teammate,” which will integrate into a user’s Google Workspace. It can build a searchable collection of work from messages and email threads with more PDFs and documents. For instance, a founder-to-be could ask the AI Teammate, “Are we ready for launch?” and the assistant will provide an analysis and summary based on the information it can access in Gmail, Google Docs and other Workspace apps.
Project Astra
Project Astra is Google’s latest advancement toward its AI assistant that’s being built by Google’s DeepMind AI unit. It’s just a prototype for now, but you can think of it as Google’s aim to develop its own version of J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony Stark’s all-knowing AI assistant from the Marvel Universe.
In the demo video presented at Google I/O, the assistant — through video and audio, rather than a chatbot interface — was able to help the user remember where they left their glasses, review code and answer questions about what a certain part of a speaker is called, when that speaker was shown on video.
Google said a truly useful chatbot needs to let users “talk to it naturally and without lag or delay.” The conversation in the demo video happened in real time, without lags. The demo followed OpenAI’s Monday showcase of a similar audio back-and-forth conversation with ChatGPT.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said onstage that “getting response time down to something conversational is a difficult engineering challenge.”
Pichai said he expects Project Astra to launch in Gemini later this year.
AI hardware
Google also announced Trillium, its sixth-generation TPU, or tensor processing unit — a piece of hardware integral to running complex AI operations — which is to be available to cloud customers in late 2024.
The TPUs aren’t meant to compete with other chips, like Nvidia’s graphics processing units. Pichai noted during I/O, for example, that Google Cloud will begin offering Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs in early 2025.
Nvidia said in March that Google will be using the Blackwell platform for “various internal deployments and will be one of the first cloud providers to offer Blackwell-powered instances,” and that access to Nvidia’s systems will help Google offer large-scale tools for enterprise developers building large language models.
In his speech, Pichai highlighted Google’s “longstanding partnership with Nvidia.” The companies have been working together for more than a decade, and Pichai has said in the past that he expects them to still be doing so a decade from now.
Apple’s iPhone 16 at an Apple Store on Regent Street in London on Sept. 20, 2024.
Rasid Necati Aslim | Anadolu | Getty Images
Apple has made moves to diversify its supply chain beyond China to places like India and Vietnam, but tariffs announced by the White House are set to hit those countries too.
China will face a 34% tariff, but with the existing 20% rate, that brings the true tariff rate on Beijing under this Trump term to 54%, CNBC reported. India faces a 26% tariff, while Vietnam’s rate is 46%.
Apple was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Here’s a breakdown on Apple’s supply chain footprint that could be affected by tariffs.
China
The majority of Apple’s iPhones are still assembled in China by partner Foxconn.
China accounts for around 80% of Apple’s production capacity, according to estimates from Evercore ISI in a note last month.
Around 90% of iPhones are assembled in China, Evercore ISI said.
While the number of manufacturing sites in China dropped between Apple’s 2017 and 2020 fiscal year, it has since rebounded, Bernstein said in a note last month. Chinese suppliers account for around 40% of Apple’s total, Bernstein said.
Evercore ISI estimates that 55% of Apple’s Mac products and 80% of iPads are assembled in China.
India
Apple is targeting around 25% of all iPhones globally to be made in India, a government minister said in 2023.
India could reach about 15%-20% of overall iPhone production by the end of 2025, Bernstein analysts estimate. Evercore ISI said around 10% to 15% of iPhones are currently assembled in India.
Vietnam
Vietnam has emerged in the past few years as a popular manufacturing hub for consumer electronics. Apple has increased its production in Vietnam.
Around 20% of iPad production and 90% of Apple’s wearable product assembly like the Apple Watch takes place in Vietnam, according to Evercore ISI.
Other key countries
Malaysia is a growing manufacturing location for Apple for Macs and is facing a 25% tariff. Thailand is also a small hub for Mac production and will be hit with a 36% levy.
Apple also sources components from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the United States. Components may be shipped from one country to another before assembly takes place in China or elsewhere.
In February, Apple announced plans to open a new factory for artificial intelligence servers in Texas as part of a $500 billion investment in the U.S.
However, Apple does not have mass production in the United states. It produces only the Mac Pro in Texas.
A Xiaomi store in Shanghai, China, on March 16, 2025.
Qilai Shen/Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Chinese electric carmakers Xiaomi, Xpeng and Leapmotor each delivered nearly 30,000 or more cars in March, roughly twice several of their fellow startup competitors.
It’s a sign of how some automakers are pulling ahead, while BYD remains the market leader by far.
Xiaomi delivered a record number of electric vehicles in March, exceeding 29,000 units, the company announced on social media. That topped its prior run of delivering more than 20,000 vehicles in each of the past five months.
The SU7, Xiaomi’s flagship model, was involved in a crash on a highway on Tuesday that left three dead. The automaker on Tuesday afternoon released a statement on Chinese social media that the vehicle was in navigation on autopilot mode before the accident.
Based on preliminary information, the road was obstructed because of construction. The driver took control of the car but collided with construction infrastructure. Xiaomi added in the release that investigations were underway.
That came two weeks after the automaker announced on March 18 its goal to deliver 350,000 vehicles this year. There are also talks of the automaker expanding its second EV factory in Beijing to meet demand, Bloomberg reported on March 18. Xiaomi did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Its competitor Xpeng in March delivered 33,205 vehicles, the fifth consecutive month it has delivered over 30,000 units per month and reflecting a 268% surge in deliveries from the same month last year. March is also the fifth consecutive month the company has delivered over 15,000 units of the Mona M03.
Li Autodelivered 36,674 vehicles in March, a 26.5% year-over-year increase, but fewer than every month in the second half of 2024. The company’s cars had gained early traction with Chinese consumers since most come with a fuel tank for charging the vehicle’s battery, reducing anxiety about driving range.
BYD sold 371,419 passenger vehicles in March, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 57.9%. Its overseas sales volume also hit a record high of 72,723 units in March.
Across the board, major companies across China’s electric car industry reported deliveries rose last month, indicating a pick-up in demand from the seasonally soft first two months of the year.
U.S. automaker Tesla sold 78,828 electric vehicles in China in March, marking a 11.5% year-over-year decline in growth.
Other Chinese carmakers saw growth in deliveries but some still struggled to break through the 20,000-unit mark.
Niodelivered 15,039 vehicles, a 26.7% year-over-year growth, but well below the number of cars delivered in the months of May to December last year. Nio-owned Onvo, which markets its electric vehicles as family-oriented, in March recorded 15,039 units in deliveries.
Aito, as of April 2, has not published its delivery numbers for March. The automaker, which uses Huawei tech in its vehicles, on social media had reported monthly deliveries of 34,987 and 21,517 in January and February, respectively.
Quarterly performance
On a first-quarter basis, BYD remained in the lead with 986,098 vehicles sold. The automaker, which overtook Tesla in annual sales last year, surpassed the U.S. EV giant in battery electric vehicles sales this quarter.
Tesla sold 172,754 vehicles in China in the first quarter this year, according to monthly delivery numbers published by the China Passenger Car Association.
Xpeng also reported strong growth, with a total of 94,008 vehicles delivered in the quarter ending in March, reflecting a 331% year-over-year growth.
Leapmotor saw quarterly deliveries more than double to 87,552 units from 33,410 units the same period in 2024, according to publicly available numbers the company published.
However, Li Auto and Nio reported weaker growth than their competitors in the first quarter of the year.
Nio saw 42,094 vehicles delivered in the three months ended March 2025, an increase of 40.1% year over year. Li Auto saw a slower year-over-year growth of 15.5%, with a total of 92,864 vehicles delivered.
Wednesday’s announcement, which came alongside a set of sweeping new tariffs, gives customs officials, retailers and logistics companies more time to prepare. Goods that qualify under the de minimis exemption will be subject to a duty of either 30% of their value, or $25 per item. That rate will increase to $50 per item on June 1, the White House said.
Use of the de minimis provision has exploded in recent years as shoppers flock to Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein, which offer ultra-low cost apparel, electronics and other items. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024, up from over 1 billion shipments in 2023.
Critics of the provision say it provides an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies and creates an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.
The Trump administration has sought to close the loophole over concerns that it facilitates shipments of fentanyl and other illicit substances on the claims that the packages are less likely to be inspected by customs agents.
Temu and Shein have taken steps to grow their operations in the U.S. as the de minimis loophole has come under greater scrutiny. After onboarding sellers with inventory in U.S. warehouses, Temu recently began steering shoppers to those items on its website, allowing it to speed up deliveries. Shein opened distribution centers in states including Illinois and California in 2022, and a supply chain hub in Seattle last year.