They may have thought G meant thousand. That’s not what I thought but it’s the only number that I could think of. Didn’t think it could mean a billion.

G is the SI prefix for "Giga", meaning 10^9. So, 1Gm is the SI representation of "1 giga meter = 1 billion meters", for example. It's most commonly used in computing, e.g. in 1GHz = 1 billion Hertz. You may have also seen it in power output numbers, such as saying that some power plant produces 1GWh annually (1 giga watt-hours = 1 billion watt-hours).

Of course, in computing G is also sometimes used to mean 2^30. The ISO has allocated the prefixes Ki/Mi/Gi (Kibi, Mebi, Gibi) for that use, so technically my machine has 16 GiB or RAM, which is slightly more than 16GB of RAM would be.

Sure, but when people talk about money, a G is usually a thousand (not talking about financial terms, just common usage)

aka "I just lost 3 G's on UST"

When's the last time you interacted with a human? $1G = ? Or $1000 at best.

Giga dollars? Get out more dude.