Google Cloud CEO details paths of monetization for AI

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian highlighted some of the paths his company has made to monetize artificial intelligence, during his presentation at Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology conference on Tuesday afternoon.

“We have seen 10-times growth year over year of people using our clusters,” Kurian said. “Sixty percent of all AI startups use our clusters for training and inference.”

Kurian said they have monetized compute instances on a consumption basis and have established a price platform on a token basis.

Google has built its data center clusters using either its own processors or those from Nvidia (NVDA). AWS (AMZN) also uses a combination of its own chips, as well as Nvidia and AMD.

“We monetized our security, which is powered by our AI capabilities,” Kurian said.

“We monetize based on the value we are creating for users,” he added.

“We are capturing customers faster, doing larger deals, and customers have increased their adoption of our products by 30%,” Kurian said. “We have been patient with AI, and because of that, we have found many ways to monetize AI.”

He said selling AI solutions is different from selling technology in the past. Rather than go through a company’s IT department, you might instead approach the head of customer service or head of finance as AI solutions and agents are geared for specific tasks.

“You don’t sell an AI solution the same way as other products,” Kurian said. “We sell around a solution.”