Google starts Gemini 4 training, says it needs bigger models

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Gemini's next capability leap requires "much larger base models," and the company has kicked off an ambitious Gemini 4 training run. Google Cloud revenue grew 82% year-over-year last quarter, and Alphabet has raised its 2026 AI infrastructure spending forecast to $195-205 billion.

Why it matters: Pichai's framing suggests Google sees raw model scale, not just post-training refinement, as the path to its next jump — keeping the frontier-model race tied to ever-larger compute budgets rather than efficiency gains. Paired with Google Cloud's 82% growth, it signals Google is funneling cloud profits directly into the next scaling round against OpenAI and Anthropic.