Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Alphabet and Google. He has served as Google CEO since 2015 and as Alphabet CEO since December 2019, and oversaw Google's AI strategy through the 2022–2026 period.
Role: CEO, Alphabet and Google Tenure: Google CEO since 2015; Alphabet CEO since December 2019 Background: Joined Google 2004; led Chrome, Android, and core products before CEO role.
Background and roles
Pichai joined Google in 2004 and led Chrome, Android, and core products before becoming Google CEO in 2015. He became CEO of Alphabet, Google's parent company, in December 2019.
AI strategy under Pichai
Following the emergence of ChatGPT, Pichai issued a "Code Red" memo in late 2022 or early 2023 declaring a whole-company AI priority shift.
Google released Gemini 3 on November 18, 2025, which briefly led benchmarks. Fortune reported that Sam Altman declared a "Code Red" at OpenAI in response (Fortune, Dec 2, 2025). Reuters subsequently described Google as having gone from "laggard to leader" as it pulled ahead of OpenAI (Reuters, Feb 4, 2026).
By the 2024–2026 period, the Google stack under Pichai spanned Gemini frontier models, proprietary TPU chips, Google Cloud, Android distribution, Search, and Chrome, an integrated stack that competitors assembled only through multiple partnerships.
Partnerships and acquisitions
In January 2026, Apple and Google reached an agreement under which Apple Foundation Models would be Gemini-based (Apple–Google Gemini deal, Jan 12, 2026).
In July 2025, Google completed a reverse acquihire of Windsurf, paying $2.4 billion for the Windsurf CEO and an intellectual-property license.
On April 24, 2026, Google committed up to $40 billion to Anthropic at a $350 billion valuation; see Anthropic.
AI adoption at Google
In April 2026, Pichai said that 75% of new code at Google is AI-generated (April 22, 2026), up from roughly 30% a year earlier (Source: theinformation.com).
Relationships
- leads: Google DeepMind (as parent of DeepMind; Google DeepMind is the AI research arm of Alphabet)
- related: Demis Hassabis (DeepMind CEO), Tim Cook (Apple partnership counterpart), Sam Altman (OpenAI competitive counterpart).
Sources
- Fortune / Sam Altman declares 'Code Red' as Google's Gemini 3 surges (2025-12-02)
- Reuters / Google goes from laggard to leader as it pulls ahead of OpenAI (2026-02-04)