Google used its I/O 2026 keynote on May 19 to make its biggest AI statement yet — and it came with a price tag that turned heads for the right reasons. CEO Sundar Pichai opened by noting the Gemini app now reaches roughly 900 million monthly active users, with Google processing some 9.7 trillion tokens every month. DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis went further, suggesting artificial general intelligence is "just a few years away."
The headline for everyday users was money. Google cut the price of its top-tier AI Ultra plan from $250 to $100 a month — a 60% reduction — while raising usage limits fivefold and folding in 20TB of storage and YouTube Premium. Daily prompt caps are gone too, replaced by a compute-based allowance that refreshes every five hours.
Powering the upgrade is Gemini 3.5, a new model family led by the speedy 3.5 Flash. Google says Flash outpaces the previous generation’s 3.1 Pro on coding and agentic benchmarks — scoring 76.2% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 and 83.6% on MCP Atlas — while running about four times faster than rival frontier models. It is already live across the Gemini app, Search, and Google’s Antigravity coding tool, with enterprise customers such as Shopify and Salesforce on board.
The most ambitious reveal was Gemini Spark, pitched as a true 24/7 agent that consumers can simply switch on. Where rival agents remain limited or enterprise-focused, Spark is designed to act continuously on your behalf, with support for third-party apps such as Canva, Instacart, and OpenTable arriving in the coming weeks and Chrome integration following over the summer.
Google also confirmed that Android-powered smart glasses — built with Samsung, Gentle Monster, and Warby Parker — will arrive this fall, alongside a redesigned Search box billed as the first major overhaul in 25 years, with Gemini baked in.
Taken together, I/O 2026 reads less like a product launch and more like a land grab. By cutting prices, removing limits, and shipping an always-on agent ahead of competitors, Google is betting it can win the assistant era outright. Whether Spark lives up to its demo will decide if that bet pays off — but the message to OpenAI, Anthropic, and the rest of the field was unmistakable: the contest for your default AI just accelerated.
