Google is making a bold move in the artificial intelligence subscription market with its new AI Ultra plan, unveiled at the company's annual I/O conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
The premium subscription, priced at $249.99 per month, targets power users seeking access to Google's most advanced AI capabilities. The plan delivers the "highest level of access" to Google's AI-powered apps and services, including the Veo 3 video generator, Flow video editing app, and a powerful AI capability called Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Think mode. Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs and Gemini, described it as being "for people that want to be on the absolute cutting edge of AI from Google."
The Ultra plan provides users with higher limits on AI and early access to experimental tools like Project Mariner, an internet browser extension that can automate keystrokes and mouse clicks, and Deep Think, a version of its top-shelf Gemini model that is more capable of reasoning through complicated tasks. The price is comparable to $200 monthly plans from AI model developers OpenAI and Anthropic, underscoring how companies are exploring ways to pay for the exorbitant price tag of AI development. Google's new plan also includes 30 terabytes of cloud storage and an ad-free YouTube subscription.
Google already offers other subscription options, including a $19.99-per-month service (now rebranded as Google AI Pro) with access to some AI capabilities unavailable for most free users and cheaper plans with additional cloud storage. The company recently announced that Google One subscription service, which charges consumers for cloud storage and artificial intelligence features, has crossed 150 million subscribers. That represents a 50% increase since February 2024, when Google One crossed 100 million subscriptions nearly six years after the service launched. The new AI tier accounted for "millions" of subscriptions.
During the conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters that the rise of generative AI was not at the full expense of online search. This "feels very far from a zero-sum moment," said Pichai. "The kind of use cases we are serving in search is dramatically expanding" because of AI. This indicates Google's strategy to monetize AI while maintaining its search dominance.
The AI Ultra plan is initially available in the United States, with plans to expand to more countries in the coming months.