Sundar Pichai is steering Google through its biggest shift since search

Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004 as a product manager. He led work on the Google Toolbar, then on Chrome, which launched in 2008 and became the world’s most used browser. He later took charge of Android.

Pichai grew up in Chennai, studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and earned a master’s degree from Stanford and an MBA from Wharton. He became Google’s CEO in 2015 and Alphabet’s CEO in December 2019.

AI first

Pichai began describing Google as an “AI-first” company in 2016. After the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022, Google moved faster: it merged its two AI research groups into Google DeepMind in 2023 and launched its Gemini models later that year. Gemini now runs through Search, Android, Workspace and Google Cloud.

Spending to lead

On Alphabet’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call, Pichai said training of Gemini 4 was underway, and Alphabet raised its 2026 capital spending guidance to between $195 billion and $205 billion. In June 2026, he gave the commencement address at Stanford.

What to watch

Search is still Google’s main business. The question is whether AI answers grow it or slowly replace the ad-supported results that pay for everything else.

Company

Alphabet & Google

Role

CEO

HQ

Mountain View, California

Founded

1998

Section

AI

This profile draws on public reporting and company materials.

Sources: Wikipedia: Sundar Pichai · Stanford Daily: 2026 commencement · Let’s Data Science: Pichai leads Alphabet through AI

Photo: Lukasz Kobus (European Commission), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons