Gemini closes in on a billion monthly users

Google is on track to add another entry to its roster of billion-user products — a list that already includes Search, Gmail, Drive, Android, YouTube, and Chrome. During its Q2 2026 earnings call, the company said its AI assistant Gemini now has over 950 million monthly users, up threefold from a year earlier. That follows an update in February, when Google said the Gemini app had already crossed 750 million monthly active users — meaning the assistant’s growth has continued at pace through the first half of the year.

This scale puts Gemini in more direct competition with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which hit 1 billion monthly active users in June. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai attributed part of the growth to new agentic features. “Users love new agentic features like Daily Brief and our personalized agent, Gemini Spark, which is now available in the U.S. and internationally. We’ve been shipping helpful new features like this at an incredible pace,” Pichai said on the call.

Growth has come from more than just Android. The Gemini app has also built a strong user base on iOS, helped by launches such as the Nano Banana image-generation model. According to data from analytics firm Appfigures, the app has been downloaded over 137 million times on iOS in the last 12 months alone — a sign that Gemini’s expansion isn’t confined to Google’s own operating system.

The competitive picture is shifting more broadly, too. In its latest “State of AI” report, covering the first half of 2026, analytics firm Sensor Tower found that ChatGPT’s market share among AI assistants fell below 50% for the first time, while Gemini’s share rose to 27.7%.

Many people already use AI assistant apps as a substitute for traditional search, but Google said its core search business remains strong, helped in part by an AI-centric overhaul. During the quarter, its Q&A-style AI Mode crossed 1 billion users, and the company said it is driving “an incremental increase” in search queries. Google also said that through hardware engineering, it has reduced the cost of running AI Mode for the company, even as it continues introducing new models and features to the product.

Why it matters

The numbers show Google narrowing the gap with OpenAI in the AI-assistant race just as the market itself broadens — Sensor Tower’s data suggests no single assistant now commands a majority of usage.