Google's Gemini app now has over 750 million monthly active users, CEO Sundar Pichai announced during Alphabet's Q4 2025 earnings call on February 4. That's up from 650 million the previous quarter, a 100 million user jump that happened to coincide with the December launch of Gemini 3.
The numbers game
Here's where it gets interesting, and slightly suspect. Multiple outlets are framing this as Gemini closing in on ChatGPT's "810 million MAUs," but that 810 million figure originates from a Sensor Tower estimate from late 2025, and some sources conflate ChatGPT's weekly active users with monthly figures. OpenAI itself reported 800 million weekly active users as recently as late 2025, with more recent estimates from Backlinko pushing that to 900 million WAU by December. Weekly and monthly are not the same metric, and neither Google nor OpenAI seems particularly eager to clarify the comparison.
What's clearer is the trajectory. Gemini's MAU grew roughly 15% quarter over quarter. ChatGPT's growth, according to Sensor Tower data from the same period, hit about 6% over three months. Meta AI sits at around 500 million monthly users, a figure Mark Zuckerberg shared back in September 2024 that hasn't been updated since.
The gap is narrowing, in other words, but measuring it precisely requires trusting three different companies using three different methodologies. Good luck with that.
Why this matters more than the user count
Pichai buried what might be the more telling number in his prepared remarks: "Our first party models, like Gemini, now process over 10 billion tokens per minute via direct API use by our customers." That's an enterprise metric, not a consumer one, and it suggests Gemini's commercial adoption is accelerating faster than the consumer app story alone would indicate.
Google Cloud revenue grew 48% year over year in Q4, reaching a $70 billion annual run rate. The company claims over 8 million paid Gemini Enterprise seats sold in four months, and says revenue from products built on its generative AI models grew nearly 400% year over year in the quarter. Alphabet's full-year revenue hit $403 billion, crossing the $400 billion mark for the first time.
"We were able to lower Gemini serving unit costs by 78% over 2025 through model optimizations, efficiency and utilization improvements," Pichai said during the call. That cost reduction number deserves attention. If accurate, it means Google is getting dramatically cheaper to run even as usage scales, which is the opposite of the narrative that AI companies are spending themselves into oblivion. Whether it holds as usage keeps climbing is another question.
The distribution advantage nobody wants to talk about
Gemini's user growth isn't happening in a vacuum. Sensor Tower found that twice as many U.S. Android users interact with Gemini through the operating system itself compared to the standalone app. With Android running on billions of devices globally, that's distribution ChatGPT simply cannot replicate. Apple's confirmation that it's working with Google on Gemini-powered Siri capabilities only extends that reach further.
The $7.99 per month Google AI Plus plan, which rolled out too recently to affect Q4 numbers, is aimed at converting casual users into paying ones. Whether budget-tier subscriptions are a smart play or a sign Google can't compete at the $20 price point ChatGPT commands is an open question.
Then there's the spending. Alphabet guided for $175 billion to $185 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, nearly doubling its 2025 spend. The stock dropped about 3% in after-hours trading on that news, suggesting investors are less impressed by 750 million users than they are nervous about the bill.
Google's Q1 2026 earnings, expected in late April, will be the first to potentially reflect the AI Plus subscriber impact and Gemini 3 engagement over a full quarter.
