• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman indicates Google (GOOGL)'s Gemini 3 launch has had less negative impact on OpenAI's usage and revenue metrics than initially feared.
  • Despite Gemini 3's technical advancements, OpenAI maintains strong consumer chatbot market share and continues landing enterprise deals.
  • The competitive landscape appears to be stabilizing into a multi-provider market rather than winner-take-all displacement.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed that Google's Gemini 3 launch has had less negative impact on OpenAI's usage and revenue metrics than the company initially feared, according to people familiar with internal discussions. This assessment suggests ChatGPT and OpenAI's API growth remain robust despite heightened competition from Google's latest model, which launched in late 2025 with record benchmark scores and tight integration across Search, Android, Workspace, and Cloud.

Analysts had described Gemini 3 as a major escalation in the AI race, featuring a 1M-token context window, strong coding and math performance, and native multimodal abilities that directly target OpenAI's core strengths. Yet reporting around the launch indicates OpenAI has continued to land enterprise deals and retain a dominant share of consumer chatbot traffic, which aligns with Altman's comment that Gemini 3's impact on OpenAI's metrics is smaller than expected.

"What we're seeing is that our existing customers are sticking with us, and new adoption continues at a healthy pace," one source close to OpenAI's commercial team said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The competitive pressure is real, but it hasn't translated into the kind of metric erosion we modeled in our worst-case scenarios." Attempts to reach Google for comment on Altman's statement were unsuccessful.

Market data supports this resilience narrative. As of Q4 2025, OpenAI remains the market leader in U.S. generative AI chatbots with about 61% share versus Google's 13.4%, even as competition intensifies. The company has faced margin pressure from GPU costs and rapid model iteration, but demand from both consumers and enterprises continues to grow. In enterprise segments specifically, however, OpenAI's share has reportedly fallen to around 25%, behind Anthropic at 32%, due in part to aggressive pricing and integration from competitors like Google.

Google emphasizes that over 70% of Google Cloud (GOOG) customers are using AI, with Gemini 3 embedded into data and dev-ops workflows, which puts pressure on OpenAI to deepen its enterprise capabilities and partnerships. Alphabet (GOOGL) reported Q3 2025 revenue of about $102.3 billion, with Google Cloud revenue up 34% year-over-year to $15.2 billion, driven heavily by AI infrastructure and Gemini-related demand. Cloud backlog rose about 82% YoY to $155 billion, reflecting long-term enterprise AI commitments.

Altman's statement effectively reassures customers and investors that OpenAI remains a stable, leading platform despite aggressive moves by Google. The company has responded to competitive pressure with accelerated model upgrades, including what sources describe as a "code-red" competitive push against Google featuring rapid iterations of GPT-5.x models and enhanced enterprise features.

Looking ahead, analysts expect continued rapid feature releases from both OpenAI and Google as they compete for developers and enterprise contracts. OpenAI is likely to keep emphasizing enterprise reliability, safety assurances, and integration via Microsoft Azure (MSFT) to shore up the area where Gemini 3 is most directly attacking. The broader market context shows enterprises worldwide are ramping AI budgets, with hospitals alone spending about $1.4 billion on AI in 2025, creating multiple opportunities for competing platforms.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of Gemini 3's launch. It was released in late 2025, not early 2026.