Google accelerates its AI strategy in Q3 2026

Alphabet closed the third quarter of 2026 with 25% revenue growth and an increasingly concentrated bet on artificial intelligence. The company says it is already operating at a half-trillion-dollar annual run rate, with AI driving everything from Search to Google Cloud.

The figures appear in the CEO's letter to investors. Google also announced new Gemini models, advances in agents capable of carrying out tasks, and an expansion of Waymo, its autonomous vehicle division.

AI is already driving Google's business

Google Cloud was the fastest-growing area, with revenue 103% higher than in the same quarter a year earlier. The company attributes most of that growth to AI infrastructure and its solutions for businesses.

Demand is so high that Google is working to increase its data center capacity. It also expects to continue selling its TPUs, chips designed to train and run AI models, to customers across different industries.

Use of Google's own models also increased rapidly. The APIs, which allow developers to integrate these models into their applications, now process nearly 32 billion tokens per minute. A token is a unit of text the model analyzes, such as a word or part of a word.

That volume is 40% higher than in the previous quarter and more than four times higher than a year ago.

Gemini 4 adds new models

Google says Gemini 4 Argon, launched two weeks before the announcement, grew on its developer platforms three and a half times faster during its first week than Gemini 3, although capacity remains limited.

The company says Argon is already being used in areas including finance, law, cybersecurity and science. Google teams in Chrome, Ads and Search also use it to write and optimize code. According to the company, those teams are delivering 35% more code with 30% fewer errors.

The next model in the family is Gemini 4 Carbon, introduced during the same event. Google describes it as its most powerful model to date, with advanced capabilities in cybersecurity and tasks that require maintaining goals over long periods.

Carbon ranks first on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, with a score of 59, according to the current ranking cited by Google. The company says it outperforms Argon in areas such as full-stack web development, understanding images and other formats, complex work and scientific reasoning.

For now, Carbon is being provided first to a limited group of cybersecurity specialists. It is also being tested by the United States government. Broader availability will come later.

Google also announced Genie 4, a model that simulates interactive worlds with native real-time audio. The company presents it as a component for training robots and AI agents.

Search prepares to act for you

AI is also changing how people use Google Search. The company is combining its AI-generated answers, the new AI Mode and traditional search into a single experience.

Queries in AI Mode are, on average, three times longer than conventional searches. One in five searches in that mode uses voice, images or documents. Google also says that more than 50 billion visual searches are now performed each month.

The next step is agents: systems that can complete actions, not just answer questions. Examples include booking a table, filling out a form, scheduling an appointment or making a purchase.

Google plans to bring these features to Search and the Gemini app, which already has more than 1 billion users and is, according to the company, the fastest-growing product in its history. They will later also arrive in Chrome, Android and Workspace.

That does not mean all of these uses are available to everyone. Google insists that safety, privacy and enterprise controls are essential conditions before access is expanded.

Waymo expands its operations

Outside its software products, Waymo has already driven more than 300 million fully autonomous miles. The company operates in 15 major US cities and recently opened its service to the public in San Antonio, San Diego and Tampa.

Alphabet also mentions plans to expand into Canada, Germany, Singapore and Spain. At the same time, Isomorphic Labs is using Argon to research drug design, Google showed advances in quantum computing and launched its TPUs into space through the Suncatcher project.

For you, the important point is that AI is no longer an isolated experimental line inside Google. It is increasing Search usage, supporting Cloud's growth and beginning to act as a layer that can execute tasks across multiple products. What remains to be seen is whether those agents can do so in a genuinely useful and safe way, and whether Google can offer that capability without rising demand once again limiting access.