Google Cut Its AI Price by 60%

The single most immediately impactful announcement from I/O 2026 wasn't a new model or a pair of smart glasses. It was money.

Google slashed the AI Ultra plan from $250 per month to $100 per month, according to Engadget. That's a 60% price cut — and it happened today. A higher tier at $200 (down from $250) adds Project Genie world-model access and 4x the usage limits of the $100 tier.

The $20/month AI Pro plan remains, now bundled with YouTube Premium Lite. Most mainstream coverage treated this as a footnote. Pricing is where AI wars actually get won.

The Enterprise Savings

Sundar Pichai told reporters Monday that enterprises running roughly one trillion tokens per day on Google Cloud could save more than $1 billion annually by shifting 80% of their workloads to Gemini 3.5 Flash, according to VentureBeat.

"You've probably heard anecdotes from other CIOs that companies are already blowing through their annual token budgets, and it's only May," Pichai said.

Enterprise AI costs are out of control, and Google is positioning Gemini 3.5 Flash as the fix. The model scores 76.2% on Terminal-Bench 2.1, 83.6% on MCP Atlas, and generates output tokens at four times the speed of comparable frontier models, according to Google's benchmarks and third-party analysis from Artificial Analysis cited by VentureBeat.

Gemini 3.5 Pro — the full-powered version — doesn't ship until next month. The current benchmarks are for the lighter model.

Gemini Spark: Rolling Out This Week

Google's 24/7 background AI agent — Gemini Spark — starts rolling to trusted testers this week, with a US beta for AI Ultra subscribers launching next week, according to Engadget and The Verge.

Spark runs persistently on Google Cloud infrastructure, powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash. It connects to Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, plus third-party apps including Canva, OpenTable, and Instacart via Model Context Protocol. It works when your phone is off and your laptop is closed.

Google VP Josh Woodward described it to The Verge as: "When you use it, it almost feels like you're tossing things over your shoulder, Spark's catching them, and gets the job done."

The comparison to OpenClaw — the viral AI agent platform — is direct. Wired reported that OpenClaw nearly deleted an entire trove of emails for a Meta employee experimenting with it. Google says Spark will ask permission before "high-stakes actions like spending money or sending emails." That guardrail is the minimum acceptable standard for this category.

Being an AI Ultra beta user costs $100-$200 a month. That's a significant price of admission.

Google Enters the Security Market

Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu confirmed to The Verge that Google is opening CodeMender — an AI agent for code security — to broader external testing via API. Google is marketing it as a way to "help secure the world's code bases" by flagging and fixing vulnerabilities.

Anthropic released Claude Mythos Preview as a high-security model, which improved its standing with the US government after a supply chain risk designation and lawsuit, per The Verge. OpenAI followed with its own security offering. Now Google has entered the race.

Pichai told reporters: "What Mythos has done, and credit to them, is to show that there is a value for the largest-sized model in these kinds of security use cases. But I think it's something we are capable of doing as well."

Kavukcuoglu confirmed Google is already in discussions with governments and enterprises about CodeMender audits. This is a strategic beachhead in a market where significant revenue is at stake.

The Structural Story

Most outlets treated I/O 2026 as an AI feature parade. The structural story is different.

Google AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users, according to ZDNET. That's the platform Google is now wiring every one of these announcements into — Spark, the Universal Cart, the new Search box, Gmail Live. These aren't isolated features. They're integrated into Google's ecosystem.

Consumer confidence in AI-assisted shopping remains limited. A Vogue Business survey found only 2% of fashion/beauty shoppers always use AI chatbots when shopping, and 12% use them "often." Google is betting billions that adoption grows.

On the Search box redesign — called the biggest upgrade in 25 years by Liz Reid, Google's VP of Search — Engadget's Devindra Hardawar noted a critical point: there's no confirmed opt-out for the new AI features. The old simple search won't be available.

What's Changed

Google repriced an entire product category today, launched a live agent into real users' hands, and entered the government and enterprise security market directly against Anthropic.

Google's AI is clearly competitive. The substantive question is whether handing one company persistent background access to your email, documents, calendar, credit card statements, and browser — all at once — is a deal worth $100 a month.