Sundar Pichai
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And part of why we are able to do that is because, you know, we train and serve our models on our infrastructure, including TPUs, right? And we are in our seventh generation of TPUs, and we built our first version in 2017. I remember talking about it at Google I.O. Probably people didn't pay attention to it because, like, you know, why are you building a specific machine learning X-rated chip?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, it plays out everywhere. To your earlier question on cost per query in search, The reason we feel comfortable we can serve it at that scale is because we are constantly innovating through each generation, including chips which are really, really good at inference. And Ironwood, which is our latest in our TPU series, a single pot of Ironwood is over 40 exaflops.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Right, and so the scale of these things are incredible. And we have thought about our info all the way from subsea cables to the scale at which we do infrastructure is unparalleled. And I've always viewed that full stack approach. deep infrastructure, foundation, fundamental R&D on top of it, and then you build and innovate on top of that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And I think that approach will serve us well over time, but it really empirically plays out in the cost at which we are able to provide our models. Part of the reason we've had a lot of traction with Gemini 2.5 series is not only are they great models, but we are offering it at a very attractive value. And we can do that because we are driving our infrastructure costs down.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
On the $75 billion in CapEx for 2025, obviously majority of that goes into servers, data centers, and so on, servers being the vast portion of it. I would say on looking at 2025 and looking at the compute part of the span, Half of that is going towards our cloud business in 2025. And obviously, it's a very different business to search and so on.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So a lot of it is to power the innovations from Google DeepMind, pushing the frontier. And we're doing it across many dimensions, not just large language models, but even there doing it across not just text, images, video, et cetera, building world models, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So there's just a lot of innovation which we are pushing on the frontier, obviously to support our core products like Search, YouTube, Gemini, et cetera. But 50% of the compute goes to its Google Cloud.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, first of all, at a high level, NVIDIA is a phenomenal company. Jensen is awesome. We have been working with NVIDIA now for a very, very long time, and we continue to do so. And we serve a lot of the Gemini traffic on GPUs as well. And so we give customers choice, et cetera. Internally, we train our Gemini models on TPUs, and we serve it that way across our products. But we use both.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And I do think, look, I do think everyone in the industry is going to try and do something like that. But, you know, it's, you know, NVIDIA is R&D and their ability to drive that innovation. Their software stack is world class. So, you know, they have a lot of advantages as a company and I have extraordinary respect for them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But we've always had, we are committed, we are actually deploying GPUs internally as well. I think I like that flexibility, but we are also long-term committed to the TPU direction as well. So I think it's a good combination to have both. And I think we push each other and drive the frontier forward.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think maybe it was Andrej Karpathy who used the term AJI, which is like he called it artificial jagged intelligence, right? So I think the progress is not going to be always smooth, right? Like you go through these periods, it looks like something slow, and then you see a paradigm breakthrough, et cetera. And it's been going like that for a while.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
No, look, I mean, I love building products. And in some ways, Google was really set up, I think the founders set up this kind of a deep computer science approach. And you take that and apply it to build things which can impact people on a day-to-day basis. And so it's that kind of a product and technical culture, which is the essence of the company. So I love doing that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think obviously over the last couple of years, you know, all of us scaled up on pre-training and then there was a lot of momentum with post-training and then with inference compute and now, you know, this progress with how do you take all that and stitch together in agentic workflows and, you know, and so on. So I do think there's a lot of progress and it feels pretty continuous to me, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think it's both true progress gets harder which I think will distinguish the elite teams, at least on the foundational side. I think that might be a factor. I felt the heart of the problem is, I think we are well set up for that. I think we are well set up for that. I do think we are pushing the research frontier in a much broader way than most other people.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Recently, we are testing it in labs, this whole new dedicated AI experience called AI Mode coming to Search.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
beyond just LLMs, transformer-based models, diffusion-based models, all those areas we are exploring in a deep, deep way. And there's always the chance that we may reach a point where you quite don't get that returns to the additional compute you're going to put in. But I quite haven't seen it yet, right? The progress looks maybe harder because you're now dealing with a lot more compute.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So you're really running into the loss of like, can I actually get as many electricians as I can to build the data centers at the speed, you know, all that stuff. But I haven't seen, or at least talking to our researchers, haven't seen anything fundamentally, hey, like we are not going to be able to move past at this point or something like that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think we have the opportunity to create much better experiences for people. I think people use products like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, YouTube, Search, et cetera. So with their permission, taking that personal context into account, I think we can deliver much better experiences. We are working on that, but it's something on which we have to deliver.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But I view that as one of the differentiated innovation opportunities we have ahead as a company, but it's something we are thoughtfully working on. We'll make progress there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
It's a great question. I do think, you know, the answer has got to be, you know, we've always, humans have adapted to computing and it's always been that way. But over time, the answer will be that you need to do less of the hard work, less of the adaptation and computing kind of works for you, right? And that's the holy grail, I think. And And we are making progress, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Be it touch, be it voice, everything inches us towards this future. For example, when I wear AR glasses, I already wear glasses. It's not that, you know, but the AR glasses aren't quite as comfortable as my normal glasses, but they're getting there. It's obvious to me that that'll push it to the next level of seamlessness where it kind of is ambiently there and doing stuff for you.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So I think that's the arrow, the arrow of how it'll, it has to be more seamless and just be there for you. Will it be like neural link down the line, right? Like when I wanna understand something, is it that seamless, right? I think all of that is a possibility. But I think in the immediate world, given you're going to have really natively multimodal models, which can take,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
you know, audio, vision, language, all of that, and be there in your line of view. So I think when AR really works, I think that'll wow people. I'm not talking about immersive displays, I'm talking more about AR glasses, right? And I think that paradigm looks very interesting to me having used it. You can kind of feel that next leap, right, where I think we'll all enjoy using it in a way.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And there's not a single week which goes by where I feel like I don't get to do that. So those are the parts I really enjoy. But obviously, running a company of this scale where you impact so many people, I think it's a privilege. So enjoyed every part of it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
but you still have a little bit of system integration challenges to work through. So we have maybe a couple cycles away to get to that sweet spot, what smartphones were in around 2006, 2007. So, but maybe that's the next leap, right? And so probably that's what's exciting for me.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Yes, right, I think. We are definitely excited about, be they our glasses, the next form factors, you know, Robotics is another area, all that. And we obviously build Pixel phones. We build vast data centers. So we are definitely in the physical world. You can think of Waymo as a big robot. We are driving around everywhere. So we're making, with our partners, cars that way. So definitely, yes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
They are obviously fortunate to have both of them involved in their own unique ways deeply. I talk to them all the time. I think both Larry and Sergey, credit to them. They always envision where AI would be. I think their ability to understand trends and You know, I swear I've had conversations maybe as early as like 15, 20 years ago about moments like this with them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think they both would argue that this is the most exciting time in the field, you know, and they both engage in their own ways. I think Sergey is definitely spending time with the Gemini team in a pretty hardcore way, like sitting and coding and spending time with the engineers.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And that gives the energy to the team, which I think it's unparalleled to have a founder sitting there looking at loss curves, giving feedback on model architectures. How can we improve post-training, et cetera? I think it's a rare, rare place to be. But my favorite conversations are sometimes when the three of us sit and talk. The combination of, I mean, they're very non-linear thinkers.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So I feel like it expands the conversation into ways which you always don't expect. And out of it, which comes interesting ideas. So I think I always have access to that. But I think I've worked with them for such a long time. There is friendship, respect, mutual dialogue. We love doing that. And I think I'll always have that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I'm obviously very, very familiar with the concept. I don't think I've read the book actually, but it's one of those things which is so much in the ether, you think you know it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, it's obviously by definition, it's a very impressive group, right? And I think you're talking about some of the best companies, some of the best entrepreneurs, all that. Look, it shows both how much progress we are going to see because you're basically talking about many people who are working hard to drive that progress.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So to the earlier question, when you were talking about, are we going to see progress? The answer has got to be yes, because of the unique types of people here pushing progress, right? Look, each of them, they're different people. I am fortunate to know all of them. And I think maybe only one of them has invited me to a dance, not the others, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But I just look, I spent time with Elon maybe two weeks ago when I talked to him and his ability to build future technologies into existence. I think it's just unparalleled. So like, look, these are phenomenal people. I respect all of them. You know, there's partnerships involved, there's competition involved, but...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
If I were to step back and say, at the end of the day, I love driving technology progress in a way that impacts people positively. When you think about areas like healthcare and other important areas, education, we are now talking about this is why AI is so profound. So the opportunity is what excites me. I think all of us are going to do well in this scenario. That's how I think about it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
when the internet happened, Google wasn't even around. So the other thing you can say is, there are companies we don't even know, haven't been started yet, their names aren't known. might be extraordinarily big winners in the AI thing, right? So it's going to be, AI is a much bigger landscape, opportunity landscape than all the previous technologies we have known. Combined. Combined.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And so, you know, so which is why I think it's all about, you know, the companies which will end up doing well are, you will do well because you're able to innovate and execute with the best talent. That ends up being the driver.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, I think the main moment from DeepSeek was... Look, always, if you follow the AI research and scan through papers and read them, nobody who does that would underestimate China. When you look at the amount of research output from China, they have extraordinary talent.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But I do think all of us had to adjust our priors a little bit after the deep-seek moment, which was like, well, they are even closer to the frontier than most people maybe assume. And so I think there was a moment. I think internally for us, I think externally people are very impressed and rightfully so with how efficient their models were.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Interestingly for us internally, we benchmarked it to Flash and Flash was as efficient or you could argue in some ways better. So I think to our earlier conversations, I do think this is more maybe internal baseball for us.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
We were benchmarking and saying, look, it's good to see, because they had to work in a hardware constrained way, I think, which is what drove a lot of their innovations and efficiency improvements. And so I was pleased with that. But it tells you that the frontier is evolving rapidly. There are more players closer to it than people fully realize.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And it's going to be a very dynamic moment in the industry. I think China will be very, very competent on the AI frontier is just what I always assumed.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Well, look, you're definitely hitting on what is When you look at any system, you want to find where the constraint is because that's what locates the whole system, and you are rightfully identifying the most likely constraint for AI progress, and hence, by definition, GDP growth and all that stuff. I do worry about it a lot.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
The answers are sometimes you run into challenges which you have to solve. You're running into physics barriers or something like that. This is not a problem like that. We already know the technologies that can work to supply the demand we need. So it's more to me an execution challenge, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I would phrase the energy problem as it's obviously multifaceted, but I think be it really embracing, we shouldn't have innovators dilemma in the energy sector, right? So we should lean into all the possible innovations ahead. And there are many of them, obviously, first of all, People perpetually, I think, will underestimate solar, right? You know, solar plus batteries will end up being huge.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
You know, obviously the amount of innovation that's going into nuclear, geothermal, all of that are opportunities to embrace and more, I'm not mentioning. But I think, you know, upgrading the grid, you know, solving for transmission, you know, permitting to make all of that progress faster. And then actually I think we may be workforce constrained, like, you know, to my earlier point, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
You know, I think we are all, if you look at the number of electricians leaving the workforce, versus suddenly all of us, and you project out this demand, there's a huge mismatch, right? So literally how do you make sure there is incentives and workforce development to address shortages like that? over the next decade will end up being important policies.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think we are fortunate, you know, people like Secretary Wright and Secretary Burgum, I mean, they are very, I think, deeply aware of the issue, and I think they are hitting the problem hard. But I definitely think it's solvable, but I think we all have to put our mind towards it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
No, I wouldn't say that, right? Like just for example, we are supply constrained this year in our cloud business, right? And when we are, all of us are simultaneously looking to scale up data centers, right? So we are running into real constraints. The way the constraints play out today is delays in projects because of permitting. or not having access to electricians.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
All of that is realities all of us are dealing with. So if this trend line continues, the pace at which we are all ramping up, and obviously for it to continue, we all have to generate the returns on it, and so it has to really impact the economy in a more substantive way so that they go hand in hand. If the trend continues, these constraints will be much more visible, I think.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Today, we are all working through these constraints. So, I think there are real constraints today, but I expect it to, for us to be competitive with China, et cetera, I think we have to solve these constraints in the near future.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
The way I've assumed is the U.S. is always, there's never been a time where U.S. just doesn't meet these moments, right? So to me, I look at it and say, it just means that the capitalist solutions will innovate through this moment, right? That's why people are working hard to build SMRs and nuclear fusion, et cetera. So I've kind of assumed we will meet that moment.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And if we don't, or if the lines don't match, I think the conversations will get louder and louder till we meet the moment. That's the way I internalize it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
It's a good framework, good question to talk about. I've definitely, for almost a decade, one of the first things I did was to think of the company as AI first. It was very clear to us. We had Google Brain underway in 2012. We acquired DeepMind in 2014. 2015, when I became the CEO, I said, look, the technology is really evolving.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
By the way, we are doing the same patient approach in many other areas.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Quantum is one. So tell me about quantum.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Obviously, Quantum has gotten a lot more attention in the last 12 months or so, but we have been working, just like Waymo, we work through these things, whether there's attention from the outside or not, because we are working on these things out of conviction on the long-term trends, right? So it comes from those first principles.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
obviously the universe is fundamentally quantum, to do any kind of large scale simulations in a way that truly represent nature, you would need some versions of quantum computing. I think to me quantum feels like where AI was around 2015. So I would say in a five year timeframe
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
you would have that moment where a really useful practical computation is done in a quantum way, far superior to classical computers. And that'll be that aha moment, I think, which will really show the promise of the industry. I'm absolutely confident that we will get there when I see the progress and I can pattern match to progress in the other fundamental areas we have worked on.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So it really doesn't feel like obviously, look, these are very challenging areas. You may hit a constraint. I do think a lot of people are making announcements in quantum. So in some ways it's tough to distinguish them. We had the same scenario in self-driving maybe three years ago. There were so many people doing self-driving. It looked like everyone was roughly the same, but they weren't.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I could internally tell the difference that how far ahead Waymo was. I feel that way about our quantum effort too. I think there are a lot of announcements, a lot of noise in the industry. There are a few good people, but I do think we are at the frontier there. And so, you know, I'm pretty excited about it in a three- to five-year timeframe. But we'll be patient and get there.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, we are committed to, you know, in almost all these cases, our goal would be to, you know, demonstrate more and more useful practical algorithms and show progress on that and give access to it through cloud, right? And... I think I always say it's tough to project innovation on top of a platform.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Nobody could say just because you had smartphones and GPS and payments, something like Uber would get invented. You couldn't linearly sit and project Uber from the underlying innovation. That's how the world works. For me, quantum is that foundational, again, just like AI, there's going to be extraordinary innovations on top of it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
The reason we were excited to approach our work as AI first is because we really felt that AI is what will drive the biggest progress in search. So, you know, I think even the last couple of years, I viewed this as an extraordinary opportunity for search.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
We are working on all of that too. I think we'll have more exciting moments to share this year. So look forward to making it happen.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
We are definitely, for robotics, you know, we again have probably, you know, one of the most advanced frontier R&D teams in the world now. You know, and the Gemini robotics efforts around vision, language, action, models, et cetera, are world class. I do think robotics, so we are now thinking through how we either partner or where we actually bring products out.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
You are right, we tried the application layer too early, where I think robotics wasn't really being influenced by AI as much. But now it's really the combination of AI plus robotics that gives that next sweet spot, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And so we are making plans there, nothing to share today, but you will see us make more announcements in the space, but we are definitely foundationally driving the underlying models and we are building state-of-the-art models there. We are working with partners and testing it. When I look at the progress of humanoid robots, et cetera, I mean, they are...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
In the past, I would say, well, this is obviously, you can see how janky they are. Now I have to take five seconds to look at it and say closely and say, is this fake or is this an actual robot doing it? Like already I'm in that moment. And so you can see the progress in the field underway. So I think we are probably two to three years away from that magical moment in robotics too.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think if you look at how much information means to people, I think they're going to, each person is going to have access to information in a way they've never had before. So it feels very far from a zero-sum construct to me. And we are seeing it empirically when people are using search. Obviously there are a couple of major things we have done with search.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And so that's the next exciting phase.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Yeah, we have intrinsic. So one of our bets is effectively doing that. So supporting robotics manufacturers. We are committed to having the Gemini as a model You know, we'll take all modalities into account, work very, very well for robotics. It's definitely something we are committed to being on.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
How we actually bring products out, first party versus third party, et cetera, is where we are thinking.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, I think it's important to step back and say, you know, the underpinnings of a culture in which you really invest in employees and you empower them.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And even some of the perks was to create a culture where it's positive, optimistic, you're in an innovation mindset, people are talking to each other, maybe by giving lunch here, people are all sitting and talking ideas through lunch, you're cross-pollinating, imagine. So that is the thesis of it, not that we are trying to give lunch to people, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And so I, till today, feel we still get a lot of innovation in the company, at all levels of the company. And I think people wake up and say, well, I can go do this notebook alum, et cetera, are great examples, right? And so people do that all the time. So I think empowering employees, has been and is and will be a source of strength for Google.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think we can attract higher caliber people who feel like they have agency to do that. But that doesn't mean, I think people shouldn't confuse that with, like today for example, you can take something like Google DeepMind, I think there is all the way from Demis and others, extraordinary leadership team, be it Cori, Jeff, Oriel, Noam, et cetera.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think maybe only one of them has invited me to a dance, not the others. Biggest regret? Look, there are acquisitions we debated hard, came close. Just give me one name. We're going to get in trouble. Maybe Netflix. We just leaned into the user experience. And over time, we figured out monetization to follow.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
All these leaders have strong opinions on how to drive that frontier forward and that's happening too, right? So I think it's important to strike a balance between the two. I think when you empower employees a lot, in some ways, like we have allowed for more free speech than other companies, that's one way you can think about it. So you're gonna hear voices,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Sometimes you can hear like what is effectively 500 people in the company, but that doesn't represent the company as a whole. So in some ways we are different from other companies and can confuse it on the outside, I think. But I think overall, look, we have a clear sense of where we are going. I think we want to empower people all in the service of our mission.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So if anything, you know, over the past few years, and you are right, there are moments, not just us, But as an industry, I think, I think some of the other things became more of the focus than the mission of the company and why we are all here, right? We are not all here in the company to resolve our personal differences or something. We are here because you're excited about
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
you know, innovating in the service of the mission of the company and the impact you can have. And so bringing that focus back, that's something I've been very deliberate about for the past few years. And I think it needs reinforcing. I think one of the lessons for me was we all grew so much that you assumed everyone always understood those underpinnings.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Transformers drove some of the biggest innovations in search with BERT and MUM, dramatically improved search quality. We launched AI overviews about a year ago. It's now being used by over one and a half billion users in over 150 countries. It's expanding the types of queries people can type in. And we see it empirically, the nature of queries is expanded.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But then when you added so many people, you realize you have to go back and repeat that a lot to help people internalize that. We've done that and we do that all the time. I think moments like this help a lot too. The current moment is just genuinely both so exciting and so intense. It actually reminds me a lot of early Google.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
When I walk into the GDM building, some of our earliest engineers are all sitting there. working together, people come in five days a week at a minimum, right? And so you have that intensity and you have that excitement. And I feel that same sense of optimism. So that's what I'm focused on, right? To me, that's the hardcore-ness which matters, right? Like are people, smart people,
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
really working with a passion. And that's where that intensity comes from. And you have to work hard to create that. And there are pockets of the company if that doesn't happen, you figure out what are the changes you need to make to do that. And sometimes, for example, I recreated the notion of labs. And because I said, well, there are things that are possible with 10 person teams.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And so we need to go and do that again. And there are quite a few projects, both we have shipping and are underway to come, which will be an outcome of those efforts as well. So your values are enduring, culture is something you're constantly tweaking to make sure you're true to your values. And so by definition, there's gonna be drift and you work hard to snap it back.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Oh, you know, for sure. Look, I think COVID was such a big distortion to our way of working, right? So fundamentally, Google was designed to be a culture in which people were seeing each other, engaging with each other. So losing that continuity, right, I think definitely impacted our culture.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So when we have gotten people back in a 3-2 model, and some teams work beyond that, I think it's been important, I've spent time to get those connections back. Like for example, at GDM we were intentional in creating a physical space, where we can get all of them back in the same building, both in London, both in Mountain View.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And taking our newest building with that kind of a tent-like roof structure and putting all the people in and being intentional about it has made a massive difference.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
The talent market, we go through these fierce moments for talent. AI is one of them. Right. And whenever there are these Google, you know, obviously we are fortunate to have some of the most talented employees. So we are a source. I'm equally proud of the fact that I think Googlers have left to start over 2000 companies, right? And so, you know, there is a virtuous cycle.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think people come back, we acquire companies. I think all of that keeps the company fresh, but in the current AI moment, Look, I think we are both holding on to critical talent. We are recruiting. I always look at the tip of the tree of, are we able to attract the best PhD researchers coming out of the top programs? And the answer is yes. And there are people who have left, who have come back.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And so I feel good about the position we are, but you work at it hard every week, every month, and so on.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So there are whole new use cases coming into search. We find for queries where we trigger AI overviews, we see query growth, and the growth continues over time. Getting the feedback from AI overviews, recently we are testing it in labs. There's a whole new dedicated AI experience called AI Mode coming to Search. We'll speak about it more at Google I.O.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
There's a lot of potential to change. There's a part of me which feels maybe we've all misunderstood what colleges are about, and maybe colleges are about that community and people getting together and exchanging. So, you know, there may be intangibles, which still maybe make the, you know, it more valuable than like we all perceive it to be, but
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But the way I think about it is you're gonna get extraordinary talent at more places around the world. So that's the way I think about it because people have access to with AI. So you don't need to be in a few certain places to be that great talent. So I think the nature of that changes. By the way, I think it's an important thing to internalize. We often talk about talent.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
We've always been able to recruit the best talent in the country. But now there's extraordinary talent emerging in other parts of the world too. So I think it's something not to lose line of sight. And maybe that's the way I would think about it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I'll answer it two ways straight. We are not a holding company in the sense that we are not just looking to invest capital in other attractive businesses. That's not who we are, right? We are, from a foundational technology basis, if we can take that technology and that R&D we do, and identify problems in which we can innovate and bring a differentiated value proposition, we'll do that, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So that's the way we approach. And so the structure is an outcome of that, right? Which means you will have businesses on paper, they may look like very disparate, but there is a common strand underneath them, right? I mean, Waymo is going to keep getting better because of the same work we do in Gemini and AI over time as Google Cloud, to search, to YouTube, to isomorphic, to robotics, et cetera.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So that is the unifying layer. And then it's a continuum. Is Google Cloud a Google business or an Alphabet business? We segment it out. And so the branding matters less, I think. We'll have a range of companies. Some of them will leave and IPO out because maybe that's the best way they can make progress. So all of that is a possibility. But what I think
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I, the founders, think about as like the underlying innovation by which, so we think of the units of quantum, right? You know, alpha fold and hence isomorphic, right? You know, self-driving and building the Waymo driver and hence all the businesses on top of it. So it's more, maybe that's how we think about it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Yeah, look, I think if anything, X over time, look, a lot of these innovations did come out of X, right? And so, including Waymo, the early incarnations of Google Brain, right? Yeah, so I think X as an incubator allows us to push the boundaries.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And in AI mode, you can have a full-on AI experience in search, including follow-on conversational queries. And we're bringing our cutting-edge models there, where the models are actually working to answer your questions using search as a real native tool. And there the queries, people are typing in queries, like literally long paragraphs, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
They're thinking about tapestries, thinking about the grid problem that are extraordinary, but it's all rooted in computer science, physics, kind of a deep technology R&D. And I think that's the foundation across everything we do.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, I think we have, as a company, I think there aren't that many companies which can push the technology frontier. Like you don't hear of companies winning Nobel prizes often. That level of foundational R&D we do and then apply it to create businesses and value. I think we have done an extraordinary job at that and we aspire to do that. I'm really proud of that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think we're pretty unique as a company that way. There are a lot of small regrets. By nature, I tend to look forward and I learn from mistakes we make. But look, there are acquisitions we debated hard, came close, and some of them are- Just give me one name. or get in trouble, maybe Netflix, right? Like we debated Netflix at some point super intensely inside.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So you go through these moments, right? And so I wouldn't call it regrets, but you always look back and like in a world of butterfly effects, there were alternate paths, but maybe they are in a different part of the multiverse.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Thanks, David. Real pleasure.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
The average query length is somewhere two to three times is what we see in search as it existed two years ago. So we are seeing people respond. In search is always from the outside, people look at it and say, search kind of looks easy to do. The craft of search is very hard. Over two decades, I think we've had a real North star of understanding what users want in search.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And you've been here, we are kind of a very metrics-driven company. We kind of know what works, users are our North Star. And empirically, we see that people are engaging more and using the product more, right? So all that. To your question about innovators' dilemma, I think, The dilemma only exists if you treat it as a dilemma, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Like, you know, say for me, all along in technology, you have these massive periods of innovation and you lean into it as hard as you can. It's the only way to do it. You know, when mobile came, everyone was like, well, you know, it's like, you're not going to have the real estate, like how will ads work, all that stuff. You know, mobile was a transition which ended up working great.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I can give great examples, right? Like TikTok has come in. YouTubers thrived since the moment TikTok has come in, right? And it was a whole new format. We did Shorts. When we launched Shorts, Shorts absolutely didn't monetize anywhere near long form. But we just leaned into the user experience and over time we figured out monetization to follow.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
So to me, you don't think about it as a dilemma because users, you have to innovate to stay ahead and you kind of lean in that direction.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
You know, in search, you know, Maybe the most widely used in AI product today might be search with AI overviews, right? People are using it intensely. Obviously, we have a standalone Gemini app. I think we are making progress there, particularly with the introduction of Gemini 2.5 Pro. We have seen a real uptake and engagement and usage growth in the product.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I'm going all in.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
We have a lot more to come just in the last, Few weeks, we have shipped deep research and updated Canvas, audio overviews. You can now go and do video generation with VO2 straight in the Gemini app on Android phones with Gemini Live. You can screen share. It can talk to what's on your screen. So there's a lot coming that way, and users are responding.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, ChatGPT has obviously had phenomenal success, but I think it's still early days and we are definitely seeing traction, seeing growth. To me, what matters is if you innovate, are users responding and using it more? That seems to be the case. It's in our hands to continue innovating. I think it's a fiercely competitive moment.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But I would say across our products, people are coming and using and consuming information across search, using the Gemini model increasingly, in YouTube, in the Gemini app and so on. So I think it's a much broader view we have.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, this is something I think people are really worried about two years ago, but have always felt to the extent that something is about the cost of serving it, Google with its infrastructure, I'd wager on that, right? And on our chances to do that better than pretty much anyone else.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And we've actually seen for a given query, the cost to serve that query has fallen dramatically in an 18-month timeframe. What is probably more of a constraint is latency, I would say. So it's less the cost per query. I think our ability to serve the experience at the right latency, search has been near instant. So how do you think about that frontier has been more of a question.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
The cost per query is not what I think will end up, you know, I think we'll be able to, we've done the transition well. That's not a primary driver of how it'll impact things, yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
You know, we already with AI overviews, you know, we are at the baseline of, you know, it's the same as without AI overviews. And so we've reached that stage. But from there, we can improve, right? And I think... I've always felt the reason ads have worked well in search is because commercial information is also information.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
People, when they have that intent, are looking for that most relevant information. I don't see any reason why AI, just from a first principle standpoint, why won't AI do a better job there as well? And so I think we are comfortable that we can work the transition through. Some of it may take time, but all indicators are that we'll be able to do it well. Over time. Over time.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
But it's already AI overviews. When we show ads, we've kind of reached the baseline.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I didn't quite realize that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Two things. I mean, the main, it's a moment of acceleration, right? So if anything, The good thing about these moments is you don't even have a lot of time to think about some of those questions. I think a lot about making sure we have the best models. We are pushing the frontier as a company, and I think the last few months have shown the breadth and range of what we are doing.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
We are there, and we have to continue to stay there. So for me, you think and you worry a lot more about execution from within, that's all. Are we executing? Are we moving fast? Are we innovating? And I think over the past 12 months, I think we've really picked up pace as a company to meet the moment. So that's where I do spend a lot of time.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Look, as a CEO, one of the first things I did in 2015, in addition to being AI first, was to really bet big on You know, we had great products like YouTube, we had Workspace and Cloud, but really turning them into robust businesses, right? As well as great products. Last year, we exited a combination of YouTube and cloud at $110 billion.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think people don't internalize that Google is one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world now. And the largest media company. In some ways, right? And definitely, we're doing a podcast. I think we're the largest podcasting service in the world. And so I feel like as a company, we are set up well. For the first time, you have this cross-cutting technology.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
Great to have you here, David. Look forward to it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
You're more than a podcaster, but you're very good at podcasting too.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
To our earlier point, thinking of us as a deep computer science company, what better technology than AI, which horizontally can impact all aspects of our business? Search, YouTube, cloud, Waymo, and the other new things we are doing. So it feels like an exciting time. So not a lot of what... You know, we've continued to do well in search. We are doing well in these other businesses.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
And so to me, it feels like, you know, one of the biggest opportunities ahead as a company too. I think the next decade ahead looks to me as exciting as the past decade, so.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
I think I respect the other stuff you've done as well.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet | The All-In Interview
We can unpack both, right? Like where our CapEx is going, but on your first part, right? Like one of the ways, you know, we look at the Pareto frontier of performance and cost. Google literally is on the predator frontier. So we deliver the best models at the most cost-effective price point, right? Like, you know, and our flash series of models are a real workhorse in the industry, right?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Return-to-office mandates are more than "backdoor layoffs"
Productivity is down in certain parts. And what is not clear to me is in the first two months, most of the people are already on projects in which they kind of know what they need to do. But, you know, the next phase which will kick in is where, let's say, you're designing next year's products and, you know, you're on a brainstorming phase. Things are more unstructured.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Return-to-office mandates are more than "backdoor layoffs"
How does that collaboration actually work? You know, that's a bit hard to understand and do. So we are trying to understand what works well and what doesn't.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 05-21-2025 6PM EDT
Google's new feature is called AI Mode, and Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai says it's a total reimagining of search. AI Mode appears to operate like other AI chatbots, answering questions, making suggestions, and entertaining follow-up queries. Google has dominated internet search for about a quarter century.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 05-21-2025 6PM EDT
But analysts and industry insiders believe that increasingly powerful AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity pose a threat as more and more people turn to AI for answers.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 05-21-2025 6PM EDT
Concerns about AI's incursion into the search arena grew earlier this month when an Apple executive testified in a court case involving Google that traditional Google searches in Apple's Safari browser had fallen for the first time in two decades. John Rewich, NPR News.
Search Engine
How do we survive the media apocalypse? (Part 2)
Welcome to Google I.O. It's great to have all of you with us.