Why Google Gemini Is Emerging as a Hot New AI Tool for Startups

For years, OpenAI held the default position in most startups’ tech stacks. It was the tool founders reached for when they needed a language model, a voice engine, or a general-purpose AI backbone. But for some startups, Google’s Gemini AI has emerged as a newly preferred productivity tool, and their reasons for adopting the tech go well beyond the technology itself. Google is in the midst of an aggressive push to convince startups that its AI solutions are superior. Leading that charge is Darren Mowry, head of Google Cloud’s global startup team. Mowry confirms that yes, Gemini use is rising among startups, and it’s resulting in new business for Google Cloud, which is the only way for businesses to use the Gemini API. Instead of just automatically selecting Amazon Web Services as their cloud provider, Mowry says, new startups are now choosing Google Cloud in part so they can get access to Gemini. Google has always been central to the AI business; in 2017, the company released a seminal AI research paper called “Attention is All You Need,” which introduced the “transformer” architecture that makes modern AI models possible. But up until last year, the company lagged behind its competitors when it came to business adoption. When Gemini was launched in 2023, it was originally named Bard, and it quickly developed a reputation for hallucinating facts. Remember when it recommended that people put glue on pizza? That changed in April 2025, when Google released Gemini 2.5 Flash, a model that handily beat OpenAI across a number of benchmarks, and according to Mowry, ignited a wave of interest in Google’s AI offerings that has only grown with the release of subsequent models. One of the factors that differentiates Google from its competitors is that it offers a fully vertically-integrated solution, in which the company can handle each part of the tech stack. Not only can startups choose from a wide selection of Google-made and external models on Google Cloud, Mowry says, but the company can also provide those startups with technical assistance to help make sure they’re getting the most out of both the models and the Google-made chips they run on. According to Mowry, this vertical integration “shrinks down the time” it takes for founders to build.” Some founders are finding that Gemini is a useful way for non-technical employees to enjoy the benefits that software developers have gotten from agentic coding tools like Claude Code. Aakash Shah, founder and CEO of allergy care startup Wyndly, says that while his engineers have gravitated toward Anthropic, his operations team wanted to use Gemini in the applications they’re already comfortable with, like Google Docs and Gmail. A common use case? Asking Gemini “who did I email on such-and-such day?” Shah says that everyone at his company now has Gemini, enabling them to chat with Gemini across the entire Google Workspace suite, including Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Meet, and Notebook LM, Google’s app that turns documents into audio podcasts. “I’m trying to get everyone to be AI-first,” Shah says, “and part of that is helping them use it where they already are instead of forcing it on them.” Sheltered International, a customs broker and freight forwarder that primarily deals with international imports, is currently using Gemini to help speed up the process of filling out customs paperwork. Founder Andrew Ciccarone says that when a shipment comes in, his company is responsible for verifying its commercial invoice data and ensuring that it’s marked with the correct Harmonized Tariff (HTS) code. According to Ciccarone, Sheltered International has started using a fine-tuned Gemini model to extract relevant information from the commercial invoice data (which often comes in the form of a PDF), validate it, and reformat it into an Excel spreadsheet. The Gemini models are considered to have state-of-the-art computer vision, enabling them to examine images and documents in incredibly granular detail. “What the AI can do is just give us a huge leap forward before the customs broker comes in to ensure everything is classified correctly,” says Ciccarone, adding that for a small operation handling the complexity of international trade documentation, Gemini has streamlined a process that used to be painfully manual. When this process was fully done by humans, it required hours of manual scanning through lengthy, unformatted documents. Still, Ciccarone admits that the company isn’t saving that much time yet, because employees still need to verify that the AI’s output is accurate. But as the fine-tuned Gemini model improves, he expects to see a significant increase in productivity. Companies are also integrating Gemini’s machine vision abilities into their actual products. Take Validity, a startup that sells itself as an all-in-one solution for the entire email marketing process. Validity chief technology officer Matt Gore says that the company’s newest product, a platform called Validity Engage, has been largely built around Gemini’s capabilities. Engage gives marketers access to four purpose-built AI agents that can analyze, optimize, and reformat emails according to internal campaign style guides. Using Gemini 3 Pro, Validity can now detect and fix granular visual details in emails (like whether a certain font matches a brand’s approved style guide) that no model could reliably catch a year ago. For instance, Gore says, emails can often appear illegible to computers and phones that are set to dark mode; with Validity Engage, marketers can guarantee that their email will be visible to everyone who received it. Geo says that Validity decided to “hitch our wagon to Gemini” following extensive testing. When developing the new feature, Gore used an orchestration tool called Mastra.ai to compare how various models approached roughly 150 common email issues, taking note of each model’s cost and speed. In the testing, Gore says, Gemini 3 Pro stood out as being “just leaps and bounds ahead of others in terms of computer vision.” He says that the Gemini 3 models are particularly good at identifying the “bounding box” of the email—basically the frame containing the email’s content. Beyond computer vision and text, Gemini’s speech capabilities have been a major selling point for founders. David Yang, founder of solopreneur-focused AI receptionist company Newo, is using Gemini to provide his virtual receptionists with voices. Yang founded Newo to help solo founders capture more inbound leads by giving everyone access to an always-on receptionist who can answer a phone call at any hour of the day. But for Newo to work, Yang needed voice models that have extremely low latency and high emotional intelligence. Originally, the company’s AI receptionists were powered by OpenAI’s text-to-speech and speech-to-text models, but the lag between asking a question and hearing an answer was too long. Now, Yang says that Newo uses Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio, a recently-released model that can understand and generate audio in real time. Not only is the new model incredibly fast, Yang says, it can also understand emotional intent, an important data point that’s usually lost with more traditional speech-to-text transcription models. As part of his push to bring startups into the Google ecosystem, Mowry says his team is currently hiring engineers and former founders to staff up a “founder advocacy” group. These employees “sole purpose in life” will be “to wake up and meet founders that have really big problems,” he says, and “help them move from ideation into actually getting things built.” The goal is to “catch these cohorts of startups early, give them a little bit of credit assistance, engineering assistance, and help them get off the ground.” This soup-to-nuts approach is helping Google win startup business, and positioning the company as the new default AI partner for the next generation of businesses. BY BEN SHERRY @BENLUCASSHERRY

3 Ways Digital Tools and AI Help Simplify Tax Season

Tax season used to be my least favorite part of being a creative small business owner. It always felt overwhelming. ​As the founder of Mochi Kids and Mochi Play Store, I juggle designing and producing children’s clothing, managing inventory and wholesale orders, and running a brick-and-mortar store. ​ When tax time hits, all the information needed to run my business has to be accurate, organized and easy to find. To make the tax process more manageable, I’ve started relying digital tools like Adobe Acrobat to stay organized and prepared. Here’s how I approach tax prep, step-by-step, to simplify everything. ​ Step 1: Digitizing paperwork before it piles up Paper forms used to be my downfall. I’d toss them into a folder and promise myself I’d deal with them later. ​By tax season, “later” meant hours of sorting and searching. ​Now, I use Adobe Scan to digitize receipts, tax forms, and donation confirmations as soon as I receive them. ​I simply snap a photo with my phone, and the app converts it into a clear, searchable PDF. I name each file and save it to a folder labeled for the current tax year. Later, I can search documents by vendor, keyword, or dollar amount. ​ Step 2: Organizing documents by category Once everything is digitized, I focus on organizing. Instead of keeping dozens of separate files, I use Acrobat’s Combine and Organize tools to merge related documents into a single file and sort them by category. ​For example, I combine PDFs for charitable contributions, income, expenses, and deductions. ​Acrobat makes it easy to reorder pages, delete duplicates, and add bookmarks so I can quickly find what I need. ​This is especially helpful when preparing and double-checking documents for my accountant before filing. Step 3: Protecting and signing your tax documents with AI Tax documents contain some very sensitive information, so security is non-negotiable. ​Before sharing files, I password protect PDFs and limit access to only the people who need them. ​I can use Protect & Sign with AI Assistant to password protect sensitive information or sign the documents for me. Taking a few extra seconds to secure files gives me peace of mind. A calmer way to approach tax season Tax season may never be exciting, but it doesn’t have to be chaotic. ​By scanning documents early, organizing them thoughtfully, protecting sensitive information, and handling signatures digitally, I’ve made the process far more manageable. ​This allows me to focus on the fun parts of running a creative small business. Why I trust Adobe Acrobat for my tax prep Adobe Acrobat has been a gamechanger for me. It helps me stay organized, save time, and feel confident that my sensitive information is secure. ​Whether you’re an individual filer, freelancer, or small business owner, Acrobat has the tools to make tax season less stressful. From digitizing paper documents to organizing files and securing sensitive information, it’s the ultimate tax prep partner. Here’s to a stress-free tax season! ​ BY AMANDA STEWART FOR ADOBE

This Single ChatGPT Prompt Can Do Hours of Market Research in Minutes—Here’s How

Market research can be a slow, fragmented, and difficult process, often involving tedious internet searches, questionable data sources, and time-consuming manual synthesis. This makes it a great candidate for some assistance from AI. What’s more, an update to a popular feature on ChatGPT has made it even better at doing this kind of work. Imagine that you have a potential business idea but still need to validate how viable it actually is, identify primary competitors in your market, and develop an ideal customer persona. Instead of spending hours collating data, explains Dan McCarthy, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Maryland, you can use Deep Research, a ChatGPT feature that directs an AI agent to develop a comprehensive, well-cited report on any topic. Last week, OpenAI upgraded Deep Research with some new abilities. The feature now runs on GPT-5.2, one of the company’s most recent models (previously it ran on a much older o3 model), and can now prioritize specific websites in its search process. Deep Research is available for all paid ChatGPT users. Here’s how to use it to get some thorough market research done quickly. Step 1: Get your prompt right To test out how this feature could help with market research, I pretended that I wanted to start a digital transformation firm based in Denver with a focus on upgrading bars with mobile, bar-to-table ordering capabilities. All I needed to do in order to get started was click the plus button next to the text box, select More, then Deep Research, and enter a prompt. This prompt will determine the information that ChatGPT prioritizes in its search, so it helps to be verbose. If you need help developing a lengthy prompt, try using ChatGPT to help write it. McCarthy, who uses AI tools extensively, says that an easy way to develop a comprehensive prompt is to activate the chatbot’s voice mode and simply have a conversation with it. Once you’ve explained what you want, McCarthy says, you can ask ChatGPT, “Given all this that I’m telling you, what do you think would be the best thing that I should even be asking you?” That should help clear up any blind spots you might’ve missed. According to McCarthy, this method should produce a solid prompt that you can give to the Deep Research agent. When I asked ChatGPT to help expand my prompt, the platform generated a 673-word result. This prompt (which you can view here) defined the agent as a market research analyst and gave it objectives to determine the business idea’s viability, map out the competition, and define my ideal customer’s persona. Additionally, it provided details on the scope of the research, and information for how the agent should format its report. I also used ChatGPT to develop a list of specific websites for the Deep Research agent to prioritize in its search. Step 2: Start the research I entered my ChatGPT-created prompt, selected the Deep Research feature, and pressed return. Before getting to work, the agent broke down its objectives into the following bullet points: Collect primary vendor docs and pricing pages starting with user-preferred sites. Survey industry, local Denver sources, and hospitality reports for market context. Compile POS integration lists, local competitors, and implementation partners in Denver. Analyze demand, model ROI scenarios, and estimate Denver bar counts and adoption rates. Draft recommendations, ICP personas, GTM plan, and cite sources with confidence ratings. Over the next 21 minutes, the agent searched through hundreds of web pages. It found liquor license databases, census information, and data regarding competitors in Denver’s hospitality-focused digital transformation market. It compiled all this information into a multi-section report. Step 3: Read the report That report (which you can view here) ended up being roughly 4,000 words. It included an overview of the market, identified customer pain points, and listed out my potential competitors. The report also included recommendations for how to position my business, strategies to break into the Denver hospitality scene, and even identified a small business that would likely be my direct competitor: a Denver-based POS integrator called Megabite. ChatGPT found that while my business idea had potential, it wouldn’t fully meet the needs of Denver-based bar owners, who have reported that bar-to-table ordering can actually lead to fewer sales and tips. Instead, the report suggested, I should consider a system that can sit on top of popular POS in which diners don’t need to pay for every new drink they order, and can instead open a digital tab. What the expert thinks of the result McCarthy told me he was impressed by the report that Deep Research produced. In particular, he was pleasantly surprised by the agent’s cleverness in using liquor licenses to get a sense of the market size, and its thoughtfulness in calling out disruption to bar culture as a potential blocker to the business. But the report wasn’t perfect. McCarthy said much of what was included was unnecessary or needlessly complex. An easy prompt to fix this? “Just tell it, ‘Explain it to me like I’m an idiot.’” McCarthy adds, “I do that all the time.” He says that a solid market research report should also answer questions regarding the scope of adoption and how often repeat purchasing is expected. McCarthy also says that users should direct the Deep Research agent to be very upfront about the data it attempted to get but couldn’t. Many websites block AI agents from engaging with their content to prevent data scraping, which can hinder the research process. By telling your agent to list out the sites that it couldn’t access, you can manually obtain that data and add it to the analysis. Our bar-to-table digital transformation firm will have to remain a pipe dream for now, but it’s clear that AI has made the process of taking an idea from zero to one easier and faster than ever. If you have an idea for a new business or are planning on an expansion or pivot in your current business, consider giving Deep Research a spin. It might unearth something that makes you think in a different way. BY BEN SHERRY @BENLUCASSHERRY

China’s latest AI is so good it’s spooked Hollywood. Will its tech sector pump the brakes?

Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt tussle in hand-to-hand combat on a rubble-strewn rooftop; Donald Trump takes on kung-fu fighters in a bamboo grove; Kanye West dances through a Chinese imperial palace while singing in Mandarin. Over the past week, a slew of cinematic videos of celebrities and characters in absurd situations have gone viral online, with one commonality –– they were created using a new artificial intelligence tool from Chinese developer ByteDance, sparking anxiety over the fast-evolving capabilities of AI. The new model, named Seedance 2.0, is among the most advanced of its kind and has quickly drawn praise for its ease of use and the realistic nature of the videos it can generate in minutes. But soon after the release, media behemoths Paramount and Disney sent cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance –– the company most famous for developing the video-sharing app TikTok –– accusing it of infringing upon their intellectual property. Hollywood’s premier trade organization, the Motion Picture Association, and labor union SAG-AFTRA also condemned the company for unauthorized use of US-copyrighted works. ByteDance responded with a statement saying it would implement better safeguards to protect intellectual property. Seedance 2.0 has quickly become the most controversial model in a wave of them released by Chinese technology companies this year, as the competition to dominate the AI industry heats up. China’s government has made advanced tech a key tenet of its national development strategy. In a televised Lunar New Year celebration this week, the country’s latest humanoid robots stole the show by performing martial arts, spin kicks and back flips. Such improvements are often met with unease, particularly in the US, China’s chief technological and political rival, in a spiral of one-upmanship redolent of its 20th-century “Space Race” with the Soviet Union. “There’s a kind of nationalist fervor around who’s going to ‘win’ the space race of AI,” said Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “That is part of what we are seeing play out again and again and again when it comes to this news as it breaks.” Here’s why the latest technology from ByteDance has rattled the world. What’s so scary about Seedance 2.0? The AI video generation model, while still not publicly available to everyone, was hailed by many as the most sophisticated of its kind to date, using images, audio, video and text prompts to quickly churn out short scenes with polished characters and motion editing control at lower cost. “My glass half empty view is that Hollywood is about to be revolutionized/decimated,” writer and producer Rhett Reese, who worked on the Deadpool movie franchise, wrote on X after seeing the video of Cruise and Pitt. One Chinese tech blogger using Seedance 2.0 said it was so advanced that it was able to generate realistic audio of his voice based solely on an image of him, raising fears over deepfakes and privacy. Afterwards, ByteDance rolled back that feature and introduced verification requirements for users who want to create digital avatars with their own images and audio, according to Chinese media. Rogier Creemers, an assistant professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who researches China’s domestic tech policy, said part of the concern stems from the rapid rate at which Chinese companies have released new iterations of AI technology this year. That has also put China on the back foot in assessing the potential negative impacts of each improvement, he said. “The more capable these apps become, automatically, the more potentially harmful they become,” said Creemers. “It’s a little bit like a car. If you build a car that can drive faster, that gets you where you need to be a lot more quickly, but it also means that you can crash faster.” What’s being done to ease concerns? After outcry from Hollywood, ByteDance said in a statement that it respects intellectual property rights and will strengthen safeguards against the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likenesses on its platform, though it did not specify how. User complaints prompted the recent ByteDance rollback and have also forced popular Chinese Instagram-like app RedNote to restrict any AI-made content that has not been properly labeled. And the arrival of Seedance 2.0 coincides with a tightening of regulations for AI content in China. China’s domestic regulation of AI surpasses the efforts of most other countries in the world, in part because of its longstanding censorship apparatus. Last week, the Cyberspace Administration of China said it was cracking down on unlabeled AI-generated content, penalizing more than 13,000 accounts and removing hundreds of thousands of posts. However, the restrictions on AI-generated content on the Chinese internet are often unevenly enforced, Nick Corvino wrote in ChinaTalk, a China-focused newsletter. He attributed the problem in part to difficulties policing content across different apps, as well as incentives for tech companies to encourage user content. “With Chinese social media platforms locked in fierce competition, both with each other and the Western market, none wants to be the strictest enforcer while others let content flow freely,” he said in a post following the launch of Seedance 2.0. What does this mean for China’s AI industry? According to analysts, China is walking a fine line between encouraging domestic development of AI models and maintaining strict controls on how those models are used. “People in the AI business would always say what the Chinese government is doing is slowing down the development of AI,” said Creemers of Leiden University. “Obviously a content control system like the Chinese that essentially limits what you can produce, that’s never fun.” Pressure to stop using certain images or data, from US media giants or other sources, may also impact efforts to refine AI. Disney accused ByteDance of illegally using its IP to train Seedance 2.0, but recently struck a deal with US company OpenAI to give Sora – OpenAI’s video generation model and Seedance competitor – access to trademarked characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse. “These agreements have everything to do with what kind of data are they going to get access to that they would not have otherwise, or that their competitors would not have?” said Srinivasan from UCLA. “There’s a high probability that the Sora products could be more refined and more advanced, if the data are better suited for the models to learn from.” At the same time, restrictions on how AI can be used or trained could also spur greater innovation, he said, noting how Chinese company DeepSeek –– blessed with a much smaller budget than the industry leaders –– built a competitive AI-powered chatbot. “When it comes to Chinese breakthroughs in AI, the DeepSeek revelation was so important because they showed that there are other ways of training language models in ways that are more economical,” he said. By Stephanie Yang