Sundar Pichai is ‘very excited’ about Google Cloud’s OpenAI partnership

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has expressed significant enthusiasm regarding Google Cloud’s recently established partnership with OpenAI. This collaboration sees Google, a dominant force in AI, providing cloud computing resources to train and serve the AI models of OpenAI, which is also Google’s primary competitor in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape.

“With respect to OpenAI, look, we are very excited to be partnering with them on Google Cloud,” Pichai stated during Google’s second-quarter earnings call. He emphasized Google Cloud’s foundation as an open platform, highlighting its track record of supporting leading companies, startups, and AI labs. Pichai further affirmed the company’s commitment to investing in and expanding this crucial cloud-side relationship.

Pichai’s comments followed intense questioning from analysts concerning the impact of AI on Google’s core search business and the rationale behind an additional $10 billion in capital expenditures this year, aimed at accelerating its position in the AI race. Roughly two and a half years post-ChatGPT’s launch, Google has decisively pivoted its focus towards developing cutting-edge AI models and products to rival OpenAI.

While ChatGPT poses a considerable threat to Google Search, the OpenAI deal simultaneously secures a substantial new client for Google Cloud. This dynamic creates a complex, potentially precarious relationship for Google, as OpenAI could leverage Google’s cloud infrastructure and chips to ultimately disrupt the very foundation of Google’s Search product.

Earlier this month, OpenAI quietly added Google Cloud to its public roster of cloud computing service suppliers, joining Microsoft and Oracle. This move follows a Reuters report in June indicating OpenAI’s consideration of tapping Google Cloud for additional computational power.

Notably, Google Cloud recorded a significant surge in revenue during the second quarter of 2025, reaching $13.6 billion, a substantial increase from $10.3 billion in the same period last year. Google attributes a considerable portion of this growth to its Google Cloud Platform and other services tailored for AI companies. Although Google Cloud remains a smaller segment compared to Google Search, its growth trajectory appears robust in the emerging AI era.

Google Cloud has successfully attracted several prominent AI labs as computing partners, including Anthropic, Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence, and Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, now notably joined by OpenAI. Pichai underscored during the earnings call that the company’s success in securing deals with major AI labs stems from its extensive supply of Nvidia GPU chips and proprietary TPU chips.

Google Cloud’s robust infrastructure and chip supply positions it as a strategic partner for OpenAI. The startup faces significant constraints regarding Nvidia GPUs, which are critical for training new AI models and serving its hundreds of millions of users. These limitations have reportedly created major tensions with OpenAI’s primary backer and largest cloud computing partner, Microsoft, prompting the ChatGPT developer to explore partnerships with other cloud market players.

On the AI product front, Google appears to be exceeding initial expectations. The company reported that its AI chatbot, Gemini, now serves 450 million monthly active users, while AI Overviews reaches 2 billion monthly active users. However, the exact business model surrounding these products, and their impact on query share from Google Search, remain undefined.

It is undoubtedly a nuanced position for Pichai to express excitement about collaborating with OpenAI, a company that represents the most formidable challenge Google Search has ever encountered. This partnership evokes parallels with Google’s deal with Yahoo decades ago, when Google, then a startup, leveraged Yahoo’s homepage as a springboard to eventually surpass it as the internet’s primary gateway. The long-term durability and implications of OpenAI’s relationship with Google remain subjects of intense industry observation.