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Table of contents 1. AI and Gemini 2. Google Search 3. Google Workspace and Productivity 4. Shopping 5. YouTube 6. Android and Hardware 7. Developer Tools 8. Google Play 9. Google AI Subscription Plan Changes Release Dates at a Glance Google held its annual developer conference, Google I/O 2026, on May 19 and 20 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California. The two-day event is where Google shares its biggest product updates and roadmap with developers and the public. This year was almost entirely about AI. From the first minute of the keynote, CEO Sundar Pichai made it clear that Google is now building every product around Gemini, its family of AI models. The theme he kept coming back to: AI that not only answers your questions but also takes action for you. Below is a breakdown of everything Google announced, organised by category, with a table of release dates at the end. What is Google I/O? Google I/O is Google’s annual developer conference. It started in 2008 and has grown into one of the biggest tech events of the year. Google uses it to show off new software, AI models, and hardware previews to developers first, before they reach the general public. This year, the keynote was watched live by tens of thousands of people around the world. Where was it held? Google I/O 2026 took place at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, which is near Google’s main headquarters. The keynote kicked off on May 19 at 1 p.m. ET (6 p.m. BST / 7 p.m. WAT). On-demand sessions and codelabs will become available on May 21. Everything Google announced at I/O 2026 1. AI and Gemini Gemini 3.5 Flash is now the default model Google launched Gemini 3.5 Flash as its new default AI model across the Gemini app and AI Mode in Google Search. According to Google, it runs four times faster than comparable frontier models and costs less than half the price. It is available globally as of May 19, including in Nigeria, at no extra cost on the free tier. Gemini 3.5 Pro is coming next month Google confirmed that Gemini 3.5 Pro is in internal testing and will roll out in June 2026. Gemini Omni: a model that understands text, images, audio, and video Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis introduced Gemini Omni, a new multimodal model that accepts text, images, audio, and video and outputs video. It is available now in the Gemini app, Google Flow, and YouTube Shorts for AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra subscribers. Developer API access is coming in the next few weeks. Gemini Spark: your AI that keeps working while your phone is locked Pichai’s biggest announcement was Gemini Spark, a 24/7 personal AI agent that runs on Google Cloud and keeps working even when your phone is locked or your laptop is closed. It can: Parse your credit card statements for hidden subscriptions Monitor your inbox and flag deadlines from school emails Write up meeting notes into a Google Doc and email it out Draft project kickoff emails from a quick voice note It connects to Gmail, Docs, and Workspace at launch. Third-party app support via MCP (a standard for connecting AI to apps) is coming over the summer. Gemini Spark is rolling out to US AI Ultra subscribers ($100/month) as a beta next week. Daily Brief: your morning AI summary A new Gemini agent called Daily Brief creates a personalised morning digest from your Gmail, Calendar, and Tasks. It is rolling out to AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra subscribers in the US starting today. The Gemini app gets a full redesign The Gemini app on Android, iOS, and the web has been visually overhauled. Google is calling the new look ‘Neural Expressive.’ The new design includes a pill-shaped prompt box, fluid animations, haptic feedback, and inline images and videos instead of plain text walls. Gemini Live is now inline rather than full-screen. This is rolling out globally now. How usage limits are changing The Gemini app is moving away from daily prompt limits. Going forward, limits will reset every five hours until you hit a weekly cap. Complex prompts, such as videos or code, will use more of your allowance than simple text questions. Project Genie meets Street View Google DeepMind’s Project Genie can now connect to real Google Street View imagery and let you generate an interactive virtual world built around that location. This is available today for AI Ultra subscribers on the $200/month plan, for users aged 18 and above. For now, only US Street View imagery is supported. SynthID watermarking expands Google is bringing AI watermark detection to Google Search and Chrome. You will be able to right-click any image and check whether it was AI-generated. Pichai said SynthID has already watermarked over 100 billion images, videos, and audio files. OpenAI, Kakao, and Eleven Labs are now adopting SynthID too. Gemini for Science A new set of AI research tools that connects Google’s Antigravity platform to over 30 major life-science databases. Available today on GitHub and inside Antigravity as ‘Science Skills.’ Google’s new AI chips: TPU 8t and 8i Google announced its first dual-chip TPU generation. The 8t chip is built for large-scale AI training and delivers nearly three times the raw compute of its predecessor. The 8i chip handles inference. Both deliver up to two times better performance per watt. Google can now distribute AI training across more than one million TPUs globally. 2. Google Search The Search box gets its biggest upgrade in 25 years Google says the redesigned Search box is the biggest upgrade to Search in over 25 years. The box now expands as you type, predicts what you are looking for, and accepts images, files, videos, and Chrome tabs as inputs alongside text. This is live globally today, including in Nigeria. Information agents: Search that monitors topics for you New personalised agents will work in the background around the clock to track news, blogs, social posts, and
Read MoreIn the 1990s, when most Nigerian businesses still relied on paper files, fax machines, and office memos, Chuma Chukwujama was already convinced software was the future he should pursue. Fresh out of studying electrical and electronics engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, one of Nigeria’s premier universities, in 1996, he had realised something early: he did not want to become a traditional engineer. Nigeria was still under military rule; engineering jobs were limited despite a high employment rate of over 82%, which was mostly informal; and the internet economy, which would later reshape business operations worldwide, was only beginning to take shape. So instead of searching endlessly for employment, Chukwujama started building technology. “If thousands of engineering graduates came out of universities at the time, only a small fraction could find actual engineering jobs,” Chukwujama told TechCabal in an interview. So I started asking myself what else I could do, and that was how I began building technology.” He started his first company, Allied Technologies, in 1996 at a time when businesses globally were beginning to shift from paper-based operations to digital tools. That same year, Microsoft released products that helped make computers and the internet more practical for everyday business use. These included Internet Explorer 3.0, one of Microsoft’s early web browsers that helped popularise internet browsing, and Windows CE 1.0, a lightweight operating system designed for early handheld and portable devices. In November 1996, Microsoft Office 97 introduced Outlook, combining email, calendars, and scheduling into a single workplace application. As businesses slowly adopted these tools, Allied Technologies positioned itself to help Nigerian companies make the transition. The company assisted organisations in setting up computers, connecting office systems, and deploying Microsoft technologies, according to Chukwujama. In 2001, Chukwujama and his co-founder, Duke Obasi, renamed their company AlliedSoft as Nigeria’s telecom sector opened to new operators such as MTN Nigeria and Econet. The company began developing custom software for telecom operators, banks, and other large organisations. AlliedSoft built systems such as SIM registration platforms and other business software to help organisations manage their operations more efficiently. While working with these companies, Chukwujama noticed that many businesses struggled with managing their workforce and employee records. Sensing an opportunity, the company expanded into HR software development in 2004 as an additional service. But building business software at the time came with major limitations. “When we started building technology, there was no cloud computing,” Chukwujama recalled. At the time, deploying software was expensive and technically demanding. In 2004, a mid-range enterprise server such as a Dell PowerEdge or HP ProLiant could cost between $5,000 and $15,000 per unit, excluding the additional cost of server racks, cooling systems, and networking equipment. For many medium-sized businesses, setting up a functional server room often starts at around $30,000. Companies also needed physical servers inside their offices, internal networks connecting branches, and dedicated IT teams just to keep business applications running. The affordability gaps were glaring. Only large corporations could afford enterprise software infrastructure, including physical servers, internal computer networks, databases, internet systems, storage devices, and the IT teams that manage them. Smaller businesses were effectively shut out. “The way software was built then required companies to keep physical servers inside their offices,” Chukwujama explained. “Businesses also needed internal networks, and larger companies had to connect multiple branches through wide area networks. It was expensive and difficult to manage.” That began to change around 2010 with the global launch of Microsoft Azure and the arrival of the MainOne submarine cable in Nigeria, the country’s first privately-owned cable, which improved internet access and made cloud computing more practical for businesses. Companies no longer needed to build expensive, diesel-powered server rooms inside their offices. Instead, they could host their systems in professional data centres such as MDXi and Rack Centre, where businesses shared the cost of industrial cooling, backup power, and internet infrastructure. The shift significantly reduced operating costs, in some cases by as much as 40%, while making software deployment faster and more reliable. By 2015, Chukwujama realised the shift to cloud technology could no longer be ignored. Companies around the world were moving away from traditional client-server systems to cloud-native platforms delivered over the internet, forcing software companies to rethink how they built and delivered products. “That was the conversation happening between 2010 and 2015,” he said. “Everybody had to decide whether to continue building software the old way or move fully into the cloud.” His company chose the latter. The business, which had previously operated as Allied Technologies and later Allied Software, evolved into Xceed365HR Limited in 2015, focused entirely on cloud-native HR software. A decade later, the company restructured again into Talpro Software, a broader software-as-a-service company with Xceed365HR as its flagship product. “We are building the HR ecosystem infrastructure for Africa,” Chukwujama said. That ambition comes as Nigeria’s enterprise software market grows increasingly crowded, with localised enterprise tech investments projected to exceed $2.45 billion by the end of 2023 as digital transformation accelerates. Global giants like SAP and Oracle remain dominant benchmarks for many large organisations, while newer startups continue to emerge across payroll, HR, and workplace management. At home, Xceed365HR is facing competition from Pade and Seamless HR. But Chukwujama believes African businesses still face a deeper problem: most global enterprise tools were not designed for African realities. “The paradigm has always been that technology is agnostic,” he said. “But what works globally does not always work here.” That localisation challenge, he argues, extends beyond language or currency support. Xceed365HR is designed to build around those complexities instead of ignoring them, according to Chukwujama. The company is integrating directly with African fintech infrastructure so businesses can move seamlessly from HR workflows into payroll and payment systems without relying on multiple disconnected platforms, according to Chukwujama. The next leap, however, may come from artificial intelligence. While many software companies are still trying to bolt AI assistants onto existing systems, Chukwujama says Talpro rebuilt its upcoming platform version entirely around AI agents. The “V3” system, which would
Read MoreTesh Mbaabu believes that finance begins in personal life. People wake up thinking about where they want to go, who they want to meet, or what they want to do, and not their banks, he explained. While consumers may not actively think about financial services, money powers almost every decision they make. “That is why I think the intersection of lifestyle and fintech has become very important and interesting,” he told TechCabal in an interview on Thursday, May 14. “It’s not just about moving money; it’s about what you can offer beyond payments infrastructure.” That thinking formed the rationale behind why Cloud9, the Kenyan digital bank Mbaabu founded with Mesongo Sibuti, acquired Kenyan ticketing platform M-Tickets in an all-stock deal valued at roughly KES 100 million ($773,000). The deal comes seven months after the cofounders exited Chpter, the social commerce startup that helps businesses sell and communicate with customers across platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. The acquisition gives Cloud9 access to a platform that says it has processed more than one million tickets across concerts, transport and sports events since 2014. “On the surface, Mtickets looks like a ticketing platform,” Mbaabu said. “But for us, we see it as a really strong point of contact with the youth, while they’re going about their daily lives.” Mbaabu told TechCabal that Mtickets will continue operating as a standalone brand under CEO and founder Brian Bogonko, adding that Mtickets’ services will be integrated directly into the Cloud9 app. Cloud9 users can buy tickets on Mtickets and on its app. Event organisers and vendors will also be able to receive payments through Cloud9’s business banking infrastructure. He also noted that the acquisition could create lending opportunities for event organisers that need upfront capital before ticket revenues come in. Cloud9 intends to use transaction histories and sales performance data from the platform to assess creditworthiness and extend financing to selected organisers, he said. First announced in October 2025, Cloud9 targets younger African consumers who earn and transact online. The startup offers multicurrency accounts, cross-border payments, virtual cards, savings products and investment tools through partnerships with regulated banks. Users can hold Kenyan shillings, US dollars, euros, Tanzanian shillings and Ugandan shillings within the app, he noted. Cloud9 currently generates revenue through transaction fees and subscription-based account tiers ranging from a free plan to a KES 999 ($7.73) monthly subscription. The paid tiers include features such as cashback and unlimited transfers. The deal pushes Cloud9 into competition with digital banks, fintech startups and ticketing platforms such as TicketSasa and Ticket Yetu. Mbaabu argued that Cloud9’s advantage lies in building financial services around user behaviour. Before Cloud9, Mbaabu and Sibuti co-founded social commerce startup Chpter and retail-tech company MarketForce. Mbaabu said both ventures shaped his understanding of how African consumers and merchants use digital services. “Each experience has built on top of the other in terms of just understanding what the continent needs from an innovation perspective,” he said. “It has made me better positioned to join the dots between how merchants operate and what they really need.” Cloud9 publicly launched in March 2026 after initially operating through a waitlist. The startup said it has thousands of users signed up and is recording hundreds of new registrations daily. Cloud9 plans to launch its business banking product publicly later this month and is exploring consumer credit and buy-now-pay-later products tied to ticket purchases and merchant activity on the platform. Mbaabu said the company remained open to more acquisitions and partnerships as it expands beyond consumer banking into embedded financial services. “The future of fintech won’t be defined by who builds the best banking app. It will be defined by who understands where life happens — and builds there first,” he wrote in his personal blog. “ For us, Mtickets is a step in that direction. Not because we want to be in ticketing. But because we want to be closer to life. And life doesn’t start in banking apps. It never did.”
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