Google's Sundar Pichai says frontier AI gets first claim on compute

Sundar Pichai, who runs Google, said on Big Technology Podcast that Google's top AI research gets first claim on its computing power. The episode was posted Tuesday.

This touches ordinary people through the AI tools they use and the cloud services many businesses rent. When computing power is short, the AI built by the biggest companies and the services they sell compete for the same supply. Pichai said everyone in the industry is short right now.

Pichai said the work of building Google's AI systems comes first. Google's cloud business, which rents out computing power, plans around its own forecasts and signed customer contracts. He described the rule for research in one line.

"the first principles we operate on is to making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier."

He also said Google builds its own data centers, which are buildings full of computers. They take years to build. He said the computing power Google has today comes from decisions he made in 2024. He expects some of today's choices to look wrong in two years.

CMSWire ran a Q&A with Pichai under the headline "Is Google Really Back at the Frontier? Sundar Pichai Tells Us." The outlet says he spoke about compute trade-offs, safety gaps and the personal agents coming next.

Google also sells computing power to other companies, and Pichai said that helps test its systems in the real world. He did not say how Google splits the supply between research and customers today.

Watch the 4 minutes where he explains how Google decides.15:04