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Has Google Finally Eaten Sam Altman’s Lunch?

Over the past three years, Google has responded to OpenAI’s ascent by investing heavily in A.I. development, building a baffling amount of data center infrastructure, and placing bets across the A.I. startup ecosystem. In 2025, Google finally caught up—and then surged ahead.

Sam Altman
Even Sam Altman has acknowledged the reversal. Earlier this month, OpenAI declared its own “code red,” a response to the surging popularity of Google’s latest Gemini model. Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
Ian Krietzberg
December 30, 2025

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In many ways, the A.I. race came into its own this year. Model upgrades, updates, and integrations continued at a pace so breakneck it was nearly impossible to keep up. The firehose of announcements, blog posts, and releases included the long-awaited (and widely dismissed) launch of OpenAI’s GPT-5 alongside major releases from Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and a slew of Chinese developers. And while those inside Silicon Valley rejoiced at the leapfrog-esque benchmark improvements, this year was about much more than rote model capability.