Sundar Pichai on agentic 2026, phones over glasses in near-term

Besides the latest on AI Mode and Gemini app adoption, CEO Sundar Pichai talked about agentic experiences and XR glasses during the Alphabet Q2 2025 earnings call. 

Pichai starts by saying that the Gemini 2.5 series — particularly the Pro model — was built with agentic capabilities top of mind: “It’s the direction where we are investing the most.” There’s also a tease, which could be a reference to Deep Think, about what’s to come:

There’s definitely exciting progress, including in the models we haven’t fully released yet. 

There’s still work to be done in regards to reliability, latency, and cost, with Google seeing progress across those areas. Pichai expects “2026 to be the year in which people kind of use agentic experiences more broadly.”

Today, Google has launched agentic features like Deep Research in Gemini and AI business calling in Google Search. There’s also Project Mariner for AI Ultra subscribers, while Google announced an Agent Mode for the Gemini app at I/O.

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The CEO was also asked about XR glasses. He is “super excited about our investment in glasses.” That said, he cautious that phones will still be the main device in the near term:

…I think it will be an exciting new emerging category, but I still expect phones to be at the center of the [consumer] experience… for the next two to three years, at least. 

That’s not particularly surprising since Google is first moving ahead with Android XR headsets. Back in May, Google announced partnerships with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to “create stylish glasses with Android XR.” With Samsung, it’s “creating a software and reference hardware platform that will enable the ecosystem to make great glasses.” Finally, “developers will be able to start building for this platform later this year,” which presumably means a new emulator.

Outside of the call, Sundar Pichai posted some reflections on Alphabet. In August 2015, the parent company was announced and he was named CEO of Google. (He stepped into the role a few months later.)

Been thinking about the incredible growth in our new businesses since then – Cloud, YouTube, Play, Subscriptions etc. To give a sense of progress, in 2015 all of Alphabet’s revenue added up to $75B. YouTube and Cloud alone ended 2024 at an annual run rate of $110B.

Looking ahead, Pichai is “excited for everything that’s coming into view for the next decade, especially the progress towards AGI – and we’re going to work hard to make sure it’s beneficial for everyone. Onwards!”