“The world has changed again. I've used ChatGPT every day for three years, and I've only used 'Gemini 3' for two hours, but I won't go back to ChatGPT.”

This is the high praise from Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, a big tech company, regarding Google's AI model 'Gemini 3', which was launched on the 18th of this month. In fact, the AI market is showering Google Gemini 3 with positive reviews. Google Gemini 3 is poised to challenge OpenAI's dominance, signaling a seismic shift in the AI industry.

● Sam Altman Acknowledges Potential Challenges

‘Gemini 3’, considered the most intelligent AI model to date, and its image generation and editing model ‘Nano Banana Pro’ have created a sensation in the AI industry since their release. Even Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, commented on Google CEO Sundar Pichai's post, saying, “It looks like an excellent model.” Altman reportedly mentioned in an internal memo that “Google's recent advancements could temporarily create economic headwinds for OpenAI. In the short term, it might create rough vibes.” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, also unusually congratulated Google via his X account.

Gemini 3 Pro scored 1501 points on the AI model evaluation site LM Arena leaderboard, surpassing the previous leader, Gemini 2.5 Pro. In 'Humanity’s Last Exam', a key benchmark for comparing AI capabilities, Gemini 3 Pro achieved a 37.5% accuracy rate, outperforming OpenAI's GPT 5 Pro (31.6%).

● Is the AI Competitive Landscape Being Reshaped?

The industry is watching whether Google can reshape the AI competitive landscape that OpenAI has led for three years. Google is a company that has secured the entire AI ecosystem, from AI semiconductors (Tensor Processing Units, TPUs) and hardware like Pixel phones to software such as the Android mobile operating system, Chrome browser, and Google search engine. Particularly, by using its self-developed inference semiconductor TPU for AI learning, Google has significantly reduced its dependence on NVIDIA.

Compared to OpenAI, Google also has an advantage in investment capacity. Martin Peers, a columnist at The Information, analyzed, “Google is in a favorable position to cover the necessary AI investment costs over the next few years, based on its cash generation capability and solid financial structure.”

OpenAI, the first mover, is countering with a 'lock-in strategy' to prevent user attrition from ChatGPT. As of last month, ChatGPT had about 800 million weekly active users, surpassing Gemini's 650 million monthly active users. OpenAI is expanding its ecosystem by introducing various shopping and reservation agents, group chats, healthcare, adult content, and launching an AI browser within ChatGPT. The pursuit by other competitors like Anthropic is also formidable. Anthropic launched its top AI model 'Claude Opus 4.5' on the 24th (local time).

Meanwhile, Google's stock price rose significantly due to the impact of Gemini 3. On the 24th (local time) in the New York Stock Exchange, the stock price of Alphabet, Google's parent company, rose by more than 6%. As a result, Google's market capitalization approached USD 3.85 trillion (approximately KRW 5,700 trillion), narrowing the gap with the second-ranked Apple (USD 4.08 trillion).

In contrast, NVIDIA's stock, which had risen 2.05% during the day, showed weakness, falling by about 2% in after-hours trading due to concerns that a substitute for NVIDIA's graphics processing unit (GPU) might emerge.

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