During the release of the second quarter results for 2026, Google announced that its artificial intelligence assistant, Gemini, is close to reaching the one billion user mark. The company revealed that the assistant has already surpassed 950 million monthly users.
According to Google, the number of Gemini users has tripled compared to the previous year. In February, the application already had more than 750 million active monthly users, demonstrating accelerated expansion since then.
This rapid growth puts the service in more direct competition with ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, which reached the milestone of one billion active monthly users in June. The gap between the two platforms is narrowing as both AI assistants incorporate increasingly sophisticated functionalities.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, emphasized during the presentation new features, such as Daily Brief and Gemini Spark, a personalized agent available in both the United States and internationally. Pichai stated: 'Users love the new autonomous features, like Daily Brief and our personalized agent, Gemini Spark, which is now available in the United States and internationally. We have been launching useful features like this at an incredible pace.'
In addition to being relevant on Android, Gemini also gained prominence on iPhone. One notable launch was Nano Banana, an image generation model that contributed to increasing interest in the application. Data from Appfigures indicates that Gemini was downloaded more than 137 million times on iOS in the last twelve months, signaling a wider reach of the tool outside the traditional Google environment.
A report called State of AI, produced by Sensor Tower, points out that ChatGPT's market share among artificial intelligence assistants has fallen below 50% for the first time. In the first half of 2026, Gemini's share reached 27.7%.
Several elements were associated with Gemini's growth, including the expansion of the user base, the introduction of AI agent-based features, integration with multiple platforms, and creation tools, such as image generation.
Parallel to the advancement of AI assistants, Google also strengthened the presence of this technology in its main tool. The company reported that the AI response mode in Search exceeded one billion users. This feature, according to the company, generated an 'incremental increase' in searches performed on the platform, aiming to transform traditional search into a conversational experience.
Google also mentioned that it managed to reduce the costs of the AI Mode through hardware engineering improvements, even with the addition of new models and functionalities. This strategy aims to expand the use of artificial intelligence across various areas of its products.
Google's AI question-and-answer mode surpassed the one billion user mark this quarter, generating an incremental increase in queries. Simultaneously, the group reported reducing the costs of the AI Mode through hardware optimizations, despite the launch of new models. If this pace is maintained, the goal of one billion users for Gemini may be achieved more quickly.
Google has introduced three new artificial intelligence versions with the aim of intensifying competition against OpenAI and Anthropic. These new offerings include faster, more economical models, and those specialized in digital protection.
The main launch is Gemini 3.6 Flash, presented by Google as the company's most advanced Flash model. This model promises performance improvements in programming, knowledge tasks, and multimodal features, while consuming 17% fewer tokens than its predecessor, resulting in reduced operational costs.
Alongside Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, focused on identifying and correcting software flaws, and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, designed to handle large workloads and autonomous AI agents, were launched.
Security is a key differentiator for this new generation of models, according to Google. Gemini 3.6 Flash has been strengthened to offer greater resistance to misuse in cyberattacks without compromising legitimate applications.
Among the important announcements are: Gemini 3.6 Flash, for being more economical and efficient; Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, dedicated to digital security; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, intended for AI agents and large-scale tasks; and the start of Gemini 4 pre-training.
In tests conducted by the company itself, Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber detected 55 issues in the V8 JavaScript Engine, including 10 vulnerabilities that other models had failed to identify. Because of this, its initial access will be restricted to governments and trusted partners.
While the new models reach the market, Google announced that Gemini 3.5 Pro remains in testing and will be made available when ready. Furthermore, the company revealed that it has started pre-training Gemini 4, indicating that the next iteration of the platform is already under development.
In parallel, Gemini 3.6 Flash and Flash-Lite are beginning to be released to developers, businesses, and Gemini application users. Flash-Lite will also undergo gradual integration with Google Search.
In recent months, the competition for increasingly specialized and efficient models has been fierce among Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and various Chinese startups. With these new releases, Google seeks to regain ground in a rapidly evolving dispute, where factors such as cost, performance, and security have gained comparable weight to the quality of responses.
