Geoffrey Hinton praises Google’s AI efforts, saying 'Google to overtake OpenAI'

Geoffrey Hinton,  a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and popularly known as the “Godfather of AI,” talked about how Google is smartly scaling AI. In an interview with Business Insider, Hinton said that Google may soon take over OpenAI.

Google is reportedly catching up to the AI race, especially after the launch of Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro models, and many users have been commenting on its advanced capabilities. The new AI model is already showcasing great performance numbers in comparison to OpenAI's GPT-5 model.

While praising the tech giant, Hinton also said, “I think it's actually more surprising than it's taken this long for Google to overtake OpenAI,” and that “they're beginning to overtake it.” With the launch of the latest generation AI models, Google may also break a million-dollar deal with Meta in supplying the in-house AI chips. If the deal breaks through, then it could come as a greater advantage for Google, as per Hinton.

Business Insider's interview also takes a deep dive into Hinton’s time at Google Brain, in which he highlighted that the company was first taking the lead in AI, but it held back.

He said, “Google invented transformers. Google had big chatbots before other people.” Earlier this year, Google made headlines for the controversial rollout of its image generation tools and AI overviews, bringing the ongoing issue of AI hallucination to light. However, the company has since strengthened its roadmap, which has started to gain much traction among its users.