The agreement places Google alongside OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI as companies now supplying AI tools for sensitive military use.

Under the deal, the Pentagon can use Google’s AI for “any lawful government purpose”. That can include work carried out on classified networks, such as mission planning and weapons targeting.

The report said Google must also help adjust some of its AI safety settings and filters if requested by the government.

At the same time, the contract includes limits on how the technology should be used. It states that the AI system is not intended for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, including target selection, without proper human oversight and control.

However, the agreement reportedly also says Google cannot block or overrule lawful operational decisions made by the government.

Google said it continues to support public sector customers across both classified and non-classified environments.

A company spokesperson said: “We believe that providing API access to our commercial models, including on Google infrastructure, with industry-standard practices and terms, represents a responsible approach to supporting national security.”

The spokesperson also said the company is strongly committed to the view that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.

The Pentagon has previously said it does not want to use AI to monitor Americans on a mass scale or build weapons that operate entirely without people involved. Still, it has pushed for broad legal access to advanced AI systems.

The deal comes as competition grows among technology firms seeking defence contracts linked to AI.

In 2025, the Pentagon signed agreements worth up to $200 million each with several leading AI companies, including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

Anthropic later had some challenges after refusing to remove restrictions tied to autonomous weapons and surveillance. It was reportedly labelled a supply-chain risk.

Google’s decision may also revive internal stresses. More than 560 employees reportedly signed an open letter urging Chief Executive Sundar Pichai to reject military AI work.

The company faced a similar backlash in 2018 during Project Maven, when staff protested Google’s involvement in a Pentagon drone programme. Google later withdrew from that project.

United States President Donald Trump, Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, and Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote have been named among the 100 most influential people in 2026 underscoring their continued impact on global markets, policy, and leadership discourse.

The list, released on April 15, recognises individuals shaping global discourse across business, politics, technology, and culture.

Dangote and Trump were alongside prominent figures such as Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Carney, and Pope Leo XIV, as well as business and technology leaders, including Sundar Pichai and Neal Mohan.

Dangote, who featured in the Titans category, is the only Nigerian on the 2026 list, though not the only African. Other Africans recognised include Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Precious Matsoso, Anok Yai, Mamadou Amadou Ly, and Zabib Musa Loro, reflecting broader African representation across leadership, health, culture, education, and peacebuilding.

This marks Dangote’s second appearance on the TIME100 list, having first been honoured in 2014 for his impact on business and philanthropy. His return more than a decade later shows the consistency and scale of his global influence.

As founder of Africa’s largest indigenous industrial conglomerate, Dangote has driven investments across cement manufacturing, sugar refining, fertiliser production, agriculture, and infrastructure, with a recent expansion into energy.

These investments have significantly reduced reliance on imports while creating jobs and strengthening local production capacity across the continent.

In its citation, TIME highlighted Dangote’s long-term vision of building globally competitive industries using African resources, pointing to his large-scale investments in manufacturing and energy infrastructure as central to Africa’s economic transformation.

Other notable figures in the Titans category include Reid Wiseman, Commander of the Artemis II mission; Sundar Pichai; Neal Mohan; Michael and Susan Dell, founders of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation; and Ralph Lauren, founder of the Ralph Lauren Corporation.

In the Pioneer category, individuals recognised for breakthroughs in science and social advocacy include Kiran Musunuru and Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas for advances in genetic therapy, as well as Aaron Williams for contributions to heart transplant readiness.

The list also features influential figures in global entertainment and culture, such as Ranbir Kapoor, Dakota Johnson, and Kate Hudson, recognised for their impact in film and broader cultural influence.

Beyond his business achievements, Dangote is widely regarded for his philanthropic leadership through the Aliko Dangote Foundation, one of Africa’s largest private foundations, which supports initiatives in healthcare, nutrition, education, disaster relief, and economic empowerment.

The 2026 recognition also comes as the Dangote Group advances its long-term growth strategy, Vision 2030, aimed at transforming the conglomerate from a $30bn regional player into a $100bn global enterprise. The roadmap is structured in phases, with the first phase spanning 2025 to 2028, focused on scaling existing businesses in cement, fertiliser, and energy, while optimising assets for global competitiveness.

The second phase, covering 2028 to 2030, is expected to drive expansion into new sectors and international markets, including planned investments in steel manufacturing, power generation, and deep-sea ports to address critical industrial gaps across Africa.

The latest TIME recognition reflects growing global acknowledgement of African leadership and enterprise, with Dangote standing out for industrial scale, while other African honourees highlight influence across governance, public health, education, culture, and peacebuilding.

His comments, given in an interview with the BBC, add urgency to high global concerns that the sector is inflating beyond what current adoption and revenue models can support.

Pichai described today’s AI bubble as an “extraordinary moment”, and also pointed to what he called “elements of irrationality” in the market. 

The concern is in line with earlier alarms sounded during the dotcom era, when valuations rose without clear foundations. Analysts now warn that a similar pattern is emerging in AI as venture capital builds startups and chipmakers at a pace that outstrips real-world usage.

He was explicit about the risks when asked how Alphabet would handle a severe downturn. “I think no company is going to be immune, including us,” he said. 

Alphabet’s stock has jumped 46% this year, buoyed by optimism over its capacity to challenge OpenAI and Microsoft in advanced model development. However, the same rally has led to talks in the United States and the United Kingdom over whether markets are pricing in far more than the technology can reasonably deliver.

In Britain, policymakers have already noted that the sector may be drifting into bubble territory. Despite these warnings, Alphabet has doubled down on its UK footprint. 

In September, the company committed £5 billion over two years to expand AI infrastructure, build a new data centre, and increase funding for DeepMind, its London-based research arm. 

Pichai also confirmed that Google will begin training models in the UK, an important step for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who wants the country to become the world’s third AI superpower after the US and China.

The company’s aggressive UK plans align with that goal, but they also point to a bigger dilemma. Pichai admitted that AI’s “immense” energy requirements are slowing Alphabet’s progress towards its net-zero targets, as the growing demand for high-performance computing drives up power consumption across its operations. 

The admission shows an industry struggle on how to balance the speed of innovation, the AI bubble, with the environmental cost of the infrastructure required to support it.

Pichai’s warning lands as investors, regulators and governments are becoming more uneasy about the sustainability of AI valuations and the stress placed on energy grids. 

The deal, announced on Wednesday, will see PayPal’s payment technology embedded into Google’s ecosystem, from consumer apps to enterprise services.

Both companies say the collaboration is the beginning of a new era in “agentic commerce”, a model where artificial intelligence tools take on more responsibility in helping users discover products, compare options, and even complete purchases with little to no manual input.

“Through this partnership, PayPal will use our industry-leading AI to enhance services and security, and we will more deeply integrate PayPal’s innovative payment capabilities for a better experience across Google products and platforms,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet.

PayPal’s Enterprise Payments will now be one of Google’s main payment providers. That means it will handle card transactions on Google Cloud, Google Ads, and Google Play. This places PayPal at the centre of some of Google’s most valuable revenue streams.

PayPal is also migrating parts of its infrastructure to Google Cloud, a transition designed to speed up innovation and expand its AI-driven commerce tools globally. It highlights a growing trend of fintechs leaning on hyperscale cloud providers for scale and security.

Security and trust are also at the core of the deal. PayPal will integrate its identity and fraud prevention tools across Google’s platforms, while Google backs the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), a proposed standard to safeguard agent-led transactions. 

This is important as AI-powered systems begin making decisions on behalf of users, raising fresh questions about consent, fraud risks, and transparency.

PayPal CEO Alex Chriss described the tie-up as “a new standard for commerce ecosystem innovation.” This is less about payments as we know them and more about boosting how the future of online transactions will be managed by intelligent systems.

The announcement follows another recent step by PayPal into AI partnerships. Earlier this month, it teamed up with Perplexity to give its users early access to the AI-powered Comet browser through a 12-month Pro subscription trial. 

The browser uses artificial intelligence to deliver direct, summarised answers, placing PayPal at the very beginning of the online shopping journey, not just the end.

The arrangement, finalised in May 2025 after months of negotiations, went live this quarter, making OpenAI one of Google Cloud’s biggest customers to date.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, confirmed the deal during Alphabet’s second-quarter earnings call, stating:

“We are very excited to be partnering with them on Google Cloud. Google Cloud is an open platform, and we have a strong history of supporting great companies, startups, AI labs, etc. So super excited about our partnership there on the cloud side, and we look forward to investing more in that relationship and growing that.”

OpenAI’s demand for compute has surged to historic levels, with projections indicating over one million GPUs will be online by the end of 2025. Its longer-term goal involves scaling to 100 million GPUs over the next decade. 

This explosive growth has outpaced Microsoft Azure’s capacity, the company’s primary cloud partner, forcing OpenAI to look elsewhere.

Google Cloud, once kept at arm’s length by OpenAI due to its rivalry with Microsoft and shared ambitions in AI, now enters the scene with a compelling offer: access to Nvidia’s top-tier H100 and GB200 GPUs, custom-built TPUs, and a mature infrastructure trusted by leading AI research outfits including Anthropic, Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, and Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence.

The exclusivity OpenAI once held with Microsoft ended quietly in January 2025. Under the new “right of first refusal” framework, OpenAI gained the freedom to diversify its backend. 

The company’s operations now span data centres in Oregon, Iowa, Frankfurt, Milan, Singapore, and Tokyo, optimised for low-latency inference and strict sovereign compliance. Workloads are split across Azure and Google Cloud using orchestration tools like Kubernetes, Anthos, and Istio.

This development reveals the pressure OpenAI faces in scaling its services while maintaining uptime, responsiveness, and sustainability commitments. Both firms have pledged to power AI workloads with 100% carbon-free energy, and will publish energy transparency metrics in line with grid-optimised strategies.

While OpenAI remains the most direct threat to Google’s crown jewel, Search, the economic logic behind this partnership is clear. Google Cloud posted a $13.62 billion revenue haul in Q2 2025, up 32% year-on-year. 

Much of that growth comes from AI workloads, prompting Alphabet to raise its capital expenditure target for the year to $85 billion, noting “strong and growing demand” across both AI and cloud services.

Still, the optics are awkward. OpenAI’s ChatGPT product has chipped away at Google’s dominance in Search, forcing the tech giant to hasten development on its own generative AI offerings like Gemini. 

That chatbot now reaches 450 million monthly users, while AI Overviews on Search reportedly sees 2 billion monthly users. But the monetisation strategy behind those products is not well explained.

Some analysts are comparing this move to Google’s early relationship with Yahoo, when it quietly powered Yahoo Search in its early days, only to displace it as the internet’s front page. 

Hopefully, history will not repeat itself.

The deal, which still requires approval from a U.S. federal judge, follows a shareholder lawsuit targeting top executives of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company. 

The plaintiffs, led by two Michigan pension funds, claimed that Google’s leadership, including CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, of neglecting their fiduciary responsibilities by allowing the company to face repeated antitrust investigations without adequate oversight, particularly in its core businesses: search, advertising technology, Android, and app distribution.

In response, Alphabet has agreed to introduce some governance reforms. These include the formation of a dedicated regulatory oversight committee within its board of directors, separate from the existing audit and compliance unit, and the creation of a senior executive team, reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai, to oversee regulatory matters. 

Again, the company plans to establish a compliance working group made up of product team managers and internal compliance specialists.

While Google denies any wrongdoing, it acknowledged the practical benefits of settling. “Over the years, we have devoted substantial resources to building robust compliance processes. To avoid protracted litigation we’re happy to make these commitments,” the company stated.

Shareholders will not receive any financial compensation. Their legal team believes the structural reforms themselves are a big win. “These reforms, rarely achieved in shareholder derivative actions, constitute a comprehensive overhaul of Alphabet’s compliance function,” the lawyers said, calling the outcome a “deeply rooted culture change.”

The proposed reforms must remain in place for at least four years. The shareholders’ legal team is expected to request up to $80 million in legal fees, separate from the $500 million Alphabet is set to invest in its internal reforms.

“This is one of the largest corporate commitments we’ve seen to compliance,” said Patrick Coughlin, one of the attorneys representing the shareholders. “We didn’t see the board getting the fulsome reports it should have gotten regarding antitrust risks. There are things it could have done, and should have done, earlier.”

The announcement came the same day that Judge Amit Mehta in Washington wrapped up hearings on another antitrust matter concerning Google’s monopoly in the search market. 

Mehta is expected to issue a ruling by August. The U.S. Department of Justice is considering drastic measures, including forcing Google to divest from its Chrome browser and share its search data with competitors.

The derivative case is filed under In re: Alphabet Inc Shareholder Derivative Litigation, Case No. 21-09388, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

For a product launched to counter OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Gemini is meeting up fast. Just a few months ago, internal estimates put Gemini’s monthly users at 350 million, compared to ChatGPT’s 600 million. Now, that gap is narrowing.

Google has restructured its AI leadership, with Josh Woodward, known for NotebookLM, taking over Gemini. This is a strategic reset where Google wants Gemini to spark the same kind of public excitement that made ChatGPT a cultural moment.

But Gemini is only part of the equation. Pichai noted that AI-powered overviews in Google Search now reach over 1.5 billion people each month. 

At the same event, Google revealed it’s bolstering Search into something more interactive. Users won’t just type in questions. They’ll get answers based on what their camera sees, what they’re planning to buy, or how they’re preparing for a test. Google is betting that its version of an AI-native internet will feel personal, proactive, and indispensable.

“Over and over, we’ve been able to deliver the best models at the most effective price point,” Pichai said.

The company is also trying to monetise this transformation. A new “AI Ultra Plan” was introduced—$249.99 per month for early access to high-end Gemini models, including Deep Think, which is tailored for complex reasoning. 

The subscription includes 30TB of cloud storage and an ad-free YouTube experience. For comparison, OpenAI and Anthropic offer premium AI access for around $200 monthly.

It’s a high price, but it shows the reality of AI development, cutting-edge tools cost real money to build and run. Google now has over 150 million paying users across its subscription tiers, including those priced as low as $19.99.

Meanwhile, the pressure is not just from OpenAI. Meta is scaling fast too. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta’s AI tools serve over one billion users across Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The company also launched a standalone chatbot app.

Driven largely by the new $19.99/month plan that gives paying users exclusive access to advanced tools, including some of Google’s top AI capabilities, more people are moving away from traditional free models and are willing to pay for premium experiences, especially if they believe it gives them an edge. 

Shimrit Ben-Yair, vice president at Google, confirmed that the higher-tier AI plan alone has drawn in “millions” of subscribers since its launch in February.

This isn’t just about cloud storage anymore. Alphabet is moving away from its dependency on ad revenue, which made up over 75% of its $350 billion haul in 2024. The pressure to diversify is real and urgent.

Why? The ground is shaking beneath Google’s core product: search. Apple recently revealed, during court testimony, that search activity on its Safari browser declined for the first time ever. It’s a first blow, and likely not the last, as users are turning to AI assistants rather than traditional search engines.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Alphabet. That single disclosure from Apple triggered a reaction on Wall Street, wiping $150 billion off Alphabet’s market value in one day.

Investors want answers. Can Google adapt to a future where ads don’t dominate? Can it make people pay for what they used to get for free?

Sundar Pichai said. “Just like you’ve seen with YouTube, we’ll give people options over time,” he said in February. “For this year, I think you’ll see us be focused on the subscription direction.”

That direction might be the company’s only lifeline. Unlike with search engines, where ads are woven into the user experience, AI tools aren’t built for advertising, at least not yet. The current playbook? Charge people directly through subscriptions or usage-based pricing.

Google One may be the clearest sign yet of Alphabet’s attempt to future-proof itself. But it also tells us that if users see value, they’ll pay and if Google wants to keep its lead, it can’t afford to be free anymore.

The decision, communicated to employees via an internal email, aligns with a current fad among U.S. corporations scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Fiona Cicconi, Alphabet’s chief people officer, informed staff on Wednesday that the company would no longer maintain “aspirational hiring goals.” 

She stated, “In 2020, we set aspirational hiring goals and focused on growing our offices outside California and New York to improve representation… but in the future, we will no longer have aspirational goals.”

Google initially set these targets in response to the protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020. At the time, CEO Sundar Pichai committed to increasing the representation of leaders from underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025. However, the company has not provided any recent updates on its progress toward this goal.

The change is also evident in Google’s latest filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company has removed a longstanding statement that previously affirmed its focus on making DEI a fundamental part of its workforce strategy. 

A spokesperson for Alphabet explained to Reuters that this omission shows the company’s ongoing review of its DEI programs.

The decision by Google to scale back on diversity hiring has been condemned by employee groups and labour organisations. Parul Koul, president of the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), called it “a real attack on gains that workers have made in the tech industry through movements fighting against racism, gender and LGBTQ discrimination, going all the way back to the civil rights movement.” 

She further described the move as part of “a troubling right-wing, anti-worker trend developing within tech companies that AWU is committed to fighting against.”

Though rolling back some DEI policies, Google has stated that it will continue to support internal employee groups such as “Trans at Google,” “Black Googler Network,” and the “Disability Alliance,” which contribute to company policies and product decisions.

Companies such as Meta and Amazon are also scaling back their diversity goals. Meta recently announced that it would be ending its DEI programs related to hiring, training, and supplier selection, while Amazon has stated that it is “winding down outdated programs and materials” related to diversity.

The corporate retreat from DEI initiatives has been revved by legal and political factors, including a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned affirmative action in university admissions. Conservative groups have challenged corporate diversity programs, arguing they promote preferential treatment.

Added to these, Google has noted that as a federal contractor, it is reviewing how its DEI programs align with recent U.S. government policy changes. “Because we are a federal contractor, our teams are also evaluating changes to our programs required to comply with recent court decisions and U.S. Executive Orders on this topic,” Cicconi told employees.

CEO Sundar Pichai outlined the company’s plans during its latest earnings call, revealing that the year will be a big scale up in how users interact with Search.

According to Pichai, Google is working towards expanding the range of questions people can ask, making Search more intuitive and capable of handling complex queries. “As AI continues to expand the universe of queries that people can ask, 2025 is going to be one of the biggest years for search innovation yet,” he stated.

An interesting part of this evolution involves incorporating features developed by Google’s research division, DeepMind.

The visualises a time where Search functions more like an interactive assistant rather than a tool that simply provides a list of website links. Users will be able to receive direct answers to detailed questions, reducing the need to visit multiple web pages.

Google’s focus on a more dynamic Search experience began after the emergence of competing technologies, particularly OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which challenged the traditional search model.

Since then, Google has been speeding up its efforts to enhance how information is delivered. However, this transition has made businesses and content creators who depend on Search traffic and advertising revenue quite concerned.

One of the most anticipated advancements is Project Astra, a system capable of analysing live video and responding to user inquiries in real-time. Pichai described it as a glimpse into the future, saying, “You can imagine the future with Project Astra.” Google aims to extend this technology to other products, including smart glasses powered by an in-house operating system.

Again, Google is developing Gemini Deep Research, an advanced tool designed to generate in-depth reports. This system could drastically change how people gather information, as it automates tasks traditionally performed through manual searches.

“You are really dramatically expanding the types of use cases for which Search can work – things which don’t always get answered instantaneously, but can take some time to answer,” Pichai explained.

Another project, Project Mariner, will simplify web navigation by interacting with websites on behalf of users. This could reduce the need for people to visit sites directly, further transforming the way Search operates. Pichai also hinted at a more interactive Search interface, allowing users to ask follow-up questions seamlessly.

“I think the [Search] product will evolve even more,” he said. “As you make it more easy for people to interact and ask follow-up questions, etc., I think we have an opportunity to drive further growth.”

Even with Google’s enthusiasm, previous attempts at implementing technology-driven Search features have been criticised. The rollout of AI-generated overviews resulted in several inaccuracies, with bizarre recommendations such as advising users to eat rocks and apply glue to pizza.

While the company acknowledged these shortcomings, it remains focused on enhancing Search through further experimentation.