Did Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s return save Google in the AI race? Sundar Pichai explains

When Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently spoke about Sergey Brin spending more time in the office, the specificity of his comments stood out. Pichai described sitting with Brin in front of large screens, watching training loss curves as Google’s AI models were being trained. For a company often portrayed as slow to respond to the generative AI boom, the image of a co-founder back in the technical trenches felt notable. It has prompted a broader question across Silicon Valley: what role, if any, did Sergey Brin’s return in “founder mode” play in Google’s recent AI acceleration? Sergey Brin stepped away from day-to-day management at Alphabet in 2019, remaining a board member but largely removed from operational decisions. That began to change in late 2022 and early 2023, after Open