Spotify moved much of its computing to Google's own chips. Google says the bill fell up to 40%.
Google Cloud posted a film on 26 October about Spotify, which it says serves 788 million users.
Spotify moved much of the software behind its app onto Axion, the processor Google designs for its own cloud.
Spotify runs between 1.5 and 2 million processor cores, the units that do the computing, principal engineer Dave Zolotusky says in the film. At that size, every server upgrade or breakdown is "just a lot of work," he says.
Google's summary says the move cut Spotify's computing costs by as much as 40% and made its systems up to 2.5 times faster, without saying which tasks were measured. Zolotusky gives a different measure, "40 plus percent price-performance savings," which counts computing per dollar rather than total spend. He calls the switch "really just a very simple code change."
The figures are Google's and Spotify's own. The film gives no dollar amount and cites no outside check of the figures.
Spotify moved code it writes itself. Which of your bought-in systems, from finance to payroll, would need the vendor's approval before a move like this?
🎥 Video: Google Cloud, official YouTube channel, 26 Oct 2026 · narration: AI voice
What the captions say
- Spotify has 788 million users.
- It moved much of its back end to Google's chips.
- Google says costs fell by up to 40%.
- It says the back end runs up to 2.5 times faster.
- Spotify's engineer calls it a simple code change.
- No dollar figure or outside audit was published.
