A major Silicon Valley executive has made a dramatic shift in AI chatbot preferences. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced on X on November 24, 2025, that he’s abandoning OpenAI’s ChatGPT after using it daily for three years, switching completely to Google’s Gemini 3.
”I’m Not Going Back” - Decision Made in Just Two Hours
Benioff made his decision after testing Gemini 3 for just two hours. In his X post, he stated “The leap is insane” and “I’m not going back,” praising the significant advances in reasoning capabilities, speed, and multimodal features.
The fact that one of ChatGPT’s most vocal supporters made such a statement has sent shockwaves through the entire AI industry.
Gemini 3 Tops Benchmarks
Google and DeepMind released Gemini 3 last week, positioning it as “the most intelligent model that combines all of Gemini’s capabilities together.” The model immediately topped the LMArena leaderboard, a crowdsourced benchmark that evaluates AI systems on reasoning, coding, writing, and factual accuracy.
Former OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy also praised it as “clearly a tier 1 LLM” with “very solid daily driver potential.” Stripe CEO Patrick Collison also went out of his way to praise Google’s latest release, which is noteworthy given Stripe’s partnership with OpenAI.
OpenAI Internally Expected “Rough Vibes”
According to an internal OpenAI memo obtained by The Information, CEO Sam Altman told employees before Gemini 3’s release to expect “rough vibes.”
Altman acknowledged that “by all accounts, Google has been doing excellent work recently” and said Google’s progress could “create some temporary economic headwinds for our company,” but insisted OpenAI is “catching up fast.”
A New Phase in AI Competition
This move signals that AI competition has entered a new phase:
Google’s Comeback
- Google, which was caught off guard by ChatGPT’s release three years ago, has made a major comeback with Gemini 3
- Google Cloud business is also growing steadily, thanks to the surge in AI demand
- Integration with Google’s ecosystem is a significant advantage
Industry Assessment
CNBC’s Jim Cramer analyzed that Gemini could become the biggest challenger to ChatGPT. Gemini currently has 650 million monthly active users, and AI Overview reaches over 2 billion monthly users through Google Search.
Summary
Marc Benioff’s sudden switch announcement symbolizes the rapidly changing landscape of the AI industry.
- Google’s Revival: Completely recovered from being caught off guard at ChatGPT’s launch
- Intensifying Competition: First serious challenge to OpenAI’s dominance
- Diversifying User Choices: Expanding options for enterprise users
AI competition has transitioned from a pure technology race to a stage where actual user experience and integration capabilities are being contested. All eyes will be on OpenAI’s response and whether Google can maintain this momentum.