Google Launches Gemini 2.0, Sees Stock Prices Soar | Entrepreneur
In efforts to stay ahead of the Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) curve, tech giant Google announced the launch of Gemini 2.0, a new version packed with improved speed, multimodal capabilities, and autonomous decision-making features. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, described it as a game-changer, saying, "If Gemini 1.0 was about organizing and understanding information, Gemini 2.0 is about making it much more useful. I can't wait to see what this next era brings." The launch of 2.0 comes a year after Gemini 1.0, the first native multimodal model.
The announcement made on Wednesday has had an immediate impact on the market. Alphabet's stock price surged by over four per cent after the reveal, reaching a record high of USD 195.40. 
This rise follows another 3.5 per cent increase on the previous day, fueled by the launch of Google's quantum chip, Willow. Also, analysts predict Gemini 2.0 could drive Google's revenue growth by 15-20 per cent annually over the next five years.
Gemini 2.0 with TPU
According to Google, Gemini 2.0 is designed to be faster, smarter, and more versatile than its predecessor. It's twice as fast as Gemini 1.0, powered by Google's custom Trillium Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) hardware. 
The model is multimodal, meaning it can understand and generate text, images, audio, and video seamlessly. This opens up possibilities like describing a scene in words and receiving AI-generated visuals. Additionally, its agentic AI allows the system to plan and execute tasks autonomously, such as shopping online, scheduling appointments, or navigating the web using tools like Project Astra (a universal AI assistant for Android) and Project Mariner (a web-browsing AI agent).
Gemini 2.0 also comes with contextual understanding, meaning it can remember your past interactions with it and provide more personalized responses. As Pichai said, "With new advances in multimodality—like native image and audio output—and native tool use, it will enable us to build new AI agents that bring us closer to our vision of a universal assistant." 
The rollout of Gemini 2.0 across Google's products will begin in early 2025. Gemini 1.0 was launched in December 2023.
