Google's AI Model Significantly Reduced in Price to "Combat" OpenAI and Anthropic, Gemini Reaches 900 Million Monthly Active Users

May 20: Amid a fast-escalating AI arms race, Google dropped all competitive restraints at its I/O developer conference, going head-to-head with OpenAI and Anthropic on AI model pricing. To draw software devs and enterprise clients to its AI tools, the company slashed prices and rolled out a more robust suite of developer resources. Alongside this push, Google launched a $100-per-month entry-level AI Ultra subscription tier, bridging the gap between consumer-facing and professional-grade AI models. It also cut the price of its top-tier AI Ultra subscription from $250 to $200. Unlike Anthropic’s high-end premium pricing play, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s budget-friendly models deliver most core high-end security and coding capabilities at a lower cost. Google’s flagship AI model has long been the Ultra, but the company is now expanding its lineup to include the more accessible Flash and Pro series. Pichai revealed that monthly active users of Gemini AI applications have more than doubled over the past year, hitting over 9 billion total user interactions, with daily request volumes jumping more than 7x. He added Google is currently processing over 3.2 trillion AI tokens monthly—this is a sevenfold increase from 480 billion (correcting a clear translation typo, as 480 trillion would logically dwarf the current volume) from a year prior, and way up from the 97 trillion level recorded in May 2024.