Google Cloud CEO on AI: 'We have a 10-year head start on any competitor'

‘Over 50 per cent of all funded AI companies are our customers on Google Cloud and over 70 per cent of AI unicorns use Google Cloud. In other words, those that know how to do AI, understand our differentiators,’ says Thomas Kurian

Thomas Kurian says Google is winning the artificial intelligence arms race by having better cloud infrastructure for AI, "far fewer security issues than competitors," and having a massive head start against the competition, which includes the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

"As generative AI came along, we've evolved our infrastructure portfolio. Remember, Google has been building large scale infrastructure for AI for over 10 years," said Google Cloud's CEO Kurian at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology conference. "So, we have over a 10-year head start on any competitor."

The Mountain View, California-based technology giant is the world's third largest cloud computing company with a $32bn run rate. Google Cloud is growing revenues faster than AWS and Microsoft, in part, thanks to new customers placing their AI bets on Google.

In particular, Kurian said many of the most innovative and successful AI startups are Google Cloud customers.

"Over 50 per cent of all funded AI companies are our customers on Google Cloud and over 70 per cent of AI unicorns use Google Cloud," he said. "In other words, those that know how to do AI, understand our differentiators."

Google vs Microsoft vs Amazon

The three largest cloud companies on Earth—Amazon via AWS, Microsoft and Google

are investing hundreds-of-millions of dollars into building new AI software, developer tools, and cloud infrastructure across the globe. This acceleration to drive AI innovation for businesses came after Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. Generative AI became the industry's most popular buzzword, although gen AI is driving real ROI for customers.

Kurian said Google has many advantages in the AI space compared to its competitors: from its history in data analysis to cybersecurity via its $5.4bn acquisition of security star Mandiant last year.

"The data speaks for itself. We have far fewer security issues than competitors and so we start from a strong foundation," he said. "We've been working at Google on AI since 2004. So, it's our twentieth year. There's a lot we have learned in, not just building models, but building products that are enabled by AI."

Google cloud infrastructure ‘highly differentiated' for the AI market

Kurian said customers are picking Google Cloud infrastructure over the competitors because of its performance and scale.

"We're highly differentiated in a variety of areas. Just two examples. If you look at raw disk, we deliver 10-times better storage performance when measured on a IOPS for disk volume than competitors, which means you get much faster and cheaper access to disk," he said.

"From an uptime point of view, we're materially differentiated. We have two to three-times fewer outage hours, which means for mission-critical systems, a lot better experience for our customers," said Kurian. "As generative AI came along, we've evolved our infrastructure portfolio. Remember, Google has been building large scale infrastructure for AI for over ten years. So, we have over a ten-year head start on any competitor."