At a recent company-wide meeting, Google’s top leadership sent a clear signal: the future is AI, and every employee must be ready to move with it. CEO Sundar Pichai addressed staff directly, highlighting the need to boost productivity during what he described as a phase of extraordinary investment.
“Anytime you go through a period of extraordinary investment, you respond by adding a lot of headcount, right? But in this AI moment, I think we have to accomplish more by taking advantage of this transition to drive higher productivity,” Pichai said, reported The Economic Times, citing an internal audio obtained by CNBC.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is now targeting $85 billion in capital spending for 2025, a significant jump from its earlier $75 billion forecast. Much of this increase is expected to fund the infrastructure required for scaling AI-related services and tools. Despite the higher spending, Pichai underscored the need to be careful with how resources are allocated. “We are going to be going through a period of much higher investment and I think we have to be frugal with our resources, and I would strive to be more productive and efficient as a company,” he added.
Pichai also acknowledged the intensifying race in the tech space. “We are competing with other companies in the world. There will be companies which will become more efficient through this moment in terms of employee productivity.”
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Training, Tools and Talent: Google’s AI Ramp-Up
Brian Saluzzo, responsible for overseeing Google’s technical foundations, shared the company’s strategy for embedding AI into engineering operations. He pointed to efforts aimed at incorporating AI tools into daily development workflows to enhance speed and efficiency. “We feel the urgency to really quickly and urgently get AI into more of the coding workflows to address top needs so you see a much more rapid increase in velocity,” he said.
Google has launched internal platforms like AI Savvy Google, which offers product-specific toolkits and training modules, helping engineers across teams integrate AI tools seamlessly. One such tool, Cider — an AI-powered code assistant introduced in May — is already in use by half the engineering staff weekly. Saluzzo confirmed that these solutions would become central to the work of software engineers, saying, “They’ll become a pretty integral part of most SWE work.”
The company’s engineering education team has also joined forces with DeepMind to roll out Building with Gemini, a training programme designed to help employees work effectively with the Gemini AI platform.
Beyond internal upskilling, Google is also bringing in external expertise. It recently acquired Windsurf, an AI-focused startup, in a $2.4 billion transaction. As part of the deal, co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan and several key members of the research and engineering team have joined Google. “I think they will end up helping a lot in this area as well,” Pichai noted.
Smaller Teams, Bigger Output
Despite Alphabet’s headcount rising slightly in recent quarters, it remains below its peak of nearly 191,000 full-time staff recorded in 2023. As of the end of June, the company employed just over 187,000 people, according to recent filings. Earlier in 2023, Google had reduced its workforce by approximately 6 per cent and has since continued with targeted buyouts in some business units.