Google’s AI Push: Cloud Rivals, Agent Platform, and Industry Partnerships Highlighted at Cloud Next ’26

Google is betting on its artificial intelligence capabilities to narrow the gap with cloud computing leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, as the company unveiled a suite of new AI agent tools and infrastructure updates at its annual Cloud Next conference.

The centerpiece of Google’s announcement is the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, a comprehensive system designed to help businesses build, scale, govern, and optimize AI agents that can autonomously complete tasks across applications with minimal human oversight.

According to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, the platform includes new components such as an Agent Designer for creating workflows, an Inbox for monitoring agent activity, support for long-running agents, and integrations with Skills and Projects to enable complex enterprise use cases.

Google is also introducing two new eighth-generation Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) — the 8T and 8I — specifically engineered for AI workloads. These chips are intended to support the heavy computational demands of training and deploying large AI models, with the 8I optimized for inference tasks.

The company highlighted that its AI infrastructure is already seeing significant adoption, noting that nearly 75% of Google Cloud customers use its AI products in their operations, and that over 330 customers processed more than a trillion tokens each in the past year through direct API use.

Google reported that its models now process more than 16 billion tokens per minute via customer API usage, up from 10 billion tokens per minute in the previous quarter, reflecting growing demand for AI-powered services across industries.

Beyond the agent platform and chips, Google announced advancements in its Agentic Data Cloud, which includes a cross-cloud Lakehouse and Knowledge Catalog designed to allow AI agents to access and act on business data at the speed and scale required for enterprise automation.

The company also unveiled Agentic Defense, combining Google’s Threat Intelligence and Security Operations with Wiz’s cloud and AI security platform to help organizations prevent, detect, and respond to threats targeting AI systems.

Google positioned these announcements as part of its broader vision for the “Agentic Enterprise,” where AI agents handle routine and complex business processes, enabling organizations to automate workflows while maintaining security, performance, and cost efficiency.

Kurian emphasized that realizing this vision requires a fundamental shift in how companies approach infrastructure and software, moving beyond basic AI integration to systems designed specifically for autonomous agent operation at scale.

The updates come as Google seeks to strengthen its position in the competitive cloud market, where Amazon and Microsoft have historically held larger shares. Google’s strategy centers on leveraging its AI research and infrastructure innovations to offer differentiated value to enterprise customers seeking to adopt next-generation AI technologies.