Google’s parent company, Alphabet, hit a $4 trillion market cap on Monday (12th January), joining the likes of NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft.
This news comes hot on the heels of a multi-year collaboration between Apple and Google under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and Cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalised Siri coming this year.
In a joint statement, the two companies said that, after careful evaluation, “Apple determined that Google’s Al technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users. Apple Intelligence will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s privacy standards.”
The Gemini journey
Google kicked off the Gemini era nearly two years ago and it remains one of the company’s biggest scientific and product endeavours ever undertaken.
“It’s been incredible to see how much people love it. AI Overviews now have 2 billion users every month. The Gemini app surpasses 650 million users per month, more than 70% of our Cloud customers use our AI, 13 million developers have built with our Generative models, and that is just a snippet of the impact we’re seeing,” said Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
“Every generation of Gemini has built on the last, enabling you to do more. Gemini 1’s breakthroughs in native multimodality and long context window expanded the kinds of information that could be processed – and how much of it. Gemini 2 laid the foundation for agentic capabilities and pushed the frontiers on reasoning and thinking, helping with more complex tasks and ideas, leading to Gemini 2.5 Pro topping LMArena for over six months.”
Now, the company has introduced Gemini 3.
Introducing Gemini 3
Gemini 3 represents a major leap forward in Google DeepMind’s path toward AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), positioning itself as the company’s most intelligent and capable model to date. At its core is state-of-the-art reasoning, with Gemini 3 Pro outperforming Gemini 2.5 Pro across all major benchmarks. It demonstrates PhD-level performance on complex reasoning tests, sets new records in mathematics and general problem solving, and leads human-preference evaluations like the LMArena leaderboard. Alongside this, Gemini 3 shows major gains in factual accuracy and reliability, aiming to act less like a flattering assistant and more like a genuine thought partner.
A defining strength of Gemini 3 is its multimodal intelligence. It deeply integrates text, images, video, audio, and code, supported by a 1-million-token context window and strong spatial and visual reasoning. This allows it to analyse long papers and videos, translate handwritten or multilingual content, generate interactive learning tools, and even provide expert-level sports or skill analysis from video. Gemini 3 also powers new generative experiences in Google Search, dynamically creating visual layouts, simulations, and interactive explanations on the fly.
For creators and developers, Gemini 3 is Google’s most powerful agentic and ‘vibe coding’ model yet. It excels at zero-shot generation, building rich and interactive web UIs, and autonomously handling complex coding tasks. These capabilities are amplified by Google Antigravity, a new agent-first development platform where Gemini agents can plan, code, validate, and execute end-to-end software workflows with direct access to editors, terminals, and browsers.
Gemini 3 is also presented as Google’s most secure and responsibly built model so far, with stronger defences against misuse, prompt injection, and sycophancy, backed by extensive internal and external safety evaluations. With Gemini 3 now rolling out across consumer apps, Search, developer platforms, and enterprise products – and more models in the series planned – Google positions this release as the beginning of a new, more capable era for the Gemini ecosystem.
Gemini 3 is now available across Google’s developer ecosystem and popular third-party tools.
Gmail enters the Gemini era
Gmail is also entering the Gemini era with a shift from passive email management to a personal, proactive inbox assistant powered by Gemini 3.
New features include AI Overviews, which summarise long email threads and let users ask natural-language questions across their inbox to instantly surface answers and key details, and enhanced writing assistance through Help Me Write, context-aware Suggested Replies, and advanced Proofread tools to draft, refine, and polish emails faster.
Gmail also introduces AI Inbox, a smart prioritisation system that highlights critical messages, to-dos, and VIP communications while filtering out noise, all with Google’s built-in privacy protections.
These updates aim to help users manage growing email volume more efficiently and focus on what matters most, with features rolling out in the US starting in English and expanding over time.
Taken all together, Alphabet’s surge to a $4 trillion market capitalisation reflects growing investor confidence that AI is now a core growth engine for the company rather than a future bet.
As interest accelerates around more capable, agentic, and deeply integrated AI experiences, markets are increasingly valuing Alphabet not just as a search and advertising giant, but as a central platform company in the AI era.
