Google Spends $180 to $190 Billion on AI — and Now Wants You to Pay Too
These are enormous AI expenditures that Google is making: According to CEO Sundar Pichai, the internet company will spend 180 to 190 billion dollars this year on investments in AI infrastructure — six times the 31 billion dollars spent in 2022. However, these investments also need to be recouped, which is why this year’s Google house conference, I/O, also subtly revealed how the monetization of AI is being significantly expanded.
And this is happening on two tracks: On one hand, Google is currently beginning to display ads in its AI answers (more on that here). On the other hand, it is noticeable that more and more AI products and features are being bundled into subscription models and are therefore not freely accessible, but come with a price tag. Anyone who wants to use things like “Daily Brief”, Google’s OpenClaw counterpart “Gemini Spark”, “Google Pics”, or “Project Genie” may have to dig deep into their pockets. The subscriptions are then made additionally attractive by bundling in ad-free YouTube Premium.
| Feature | AI Plus (€8) |
AI Pro (€22) |
AI Ultra (€100) |
AI Ultra (€200) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Omni (new model for video generation & editing from text/image/video inputs, in Gemini app + Google Flow) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash (frontier performance for agents & coding, long tasks) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI Inbox in Gmail (prioritizes to-dos, personalized reply drafts, linking to Docs/Sheets/Slides) – US only | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Daily Brief in Gemini App (morning digest from Gmail, Calendar & Gemini chats) – US only | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google Pics (new image creation and editing tool, coming summer 2026) | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Voice Capabilities in Gmail, Docs, Keep (coming summer 2026) | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| YouTube Premium Lite (ad-free, offline, background – selected countries) | – | ✓ | – | – |
| YouTube Premium (full individual plan) | – | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Health Premium | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Home Premium | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Higher usage limit in Gemini App & Google Antigravity | Basic | Basic | 5× Pro | 20× Pro |
| Priority Access to Google Antigravity (agent-first development platform) | – | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pay-as-you-go Top-up AI Credits (for Antigravity, Flow, soon Gemini App) | – | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gemini Spark (24/7 AI agent that takes over tasks across Google products) – US only | – | – | ✓ (Beta) | ✓ (Beta) |
| Project Genie (experimental world creation, now with Street View integration) | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Cloud Storage | (low) | (medium) | 20 TB | 20 TB |
Token consumption is going through the roof
Because one thing is clear: due to intensive AI usage, token consumption (ultimately the basic unit of AI computations that determines prices) is also going through the roof at Google. According to Pichai, token processing has increased 7x over the past 12 months. “Two years ago, we processed 9.7 trillion tokens per month across our platforms — a huge number. Last year at I/O, that number rose to around 480 trillion tokens. Today, that number has increased sevenfold and stands at over 3.2 quadrillion per month,” the Google CEO states.
