Sundar Pichai on cost optimization
From Alphabet 2023 Q3 Earnings Call · · Alphabet Investor Relations
“We remain committed to durably re-engineering our cost base in order to help create capacity for these investments, in support of long-term, sustainable financial value. Across Alphabet, teams are looking at ways to operate as effectively as possible, focused on their biggest priorities.”
On , Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer & Director at Google, spoke about cost optimization during Alphabet 2023 Q3 Earnings Call on Alphabet Investor Relations.
About Sundar Pichai
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, has been discussing the company's transition into what he describes as an "agentic era" for AI. At Google I/O 2026, Pichai said the company laid the foundation for "agentic transformation" across its products, describing a shift from users querying for information to having ongoing conversations with products and eventually having those products take meaningful actions on users' behalf. He introduced Gemini 3.5 Flash, which he said combines frontier intelligence with action, and announced a new feature called Gemini Spark, which he described as a dedicated home base for agents on mobile devices. Pichai also announced that Google expects to spend approximately $180 to $190 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, up from $31 billion in 2022, to support AI infrastructure. In interviews following the conference, Pichai acknowledged that while Google's models are "at the frontier in some areas," the company is "a bit behind" in agentic coding, instruction following, and long-horizon tasks. He said he believes the rate of AI progress means that "three years from now, you would look back at what we had today and you will realize they were, like, pretty primitive." Pichai also addressed societal concerns about AI, stating that "the change is happening so fast" and that it is "important" for citizens to be engaged and make their preferences known. He said he views the current moment as being in the "foothills of the singularity," a phrase used by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis during the I/O keynote to describe the advent of artificial general intelligence.