Google backs AI agents

Google used its Cloud Next conference on April 22 to recast artificial intelligence agents as everyday business software, not lab demos. (reuters.com) At the Las Vegas event, Google introduced Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, a new name and broader package for tools to build, run, govern and optimize agents inside companies. Google said the platform folds together Vertex AI model and agent tools with new features for integration, orchestration, security and DevOps. (cloud.google.com) Google also used customer names to show the pitch had moved beyond prototypes. Its Cloud Next customer roundup highlighted Capcom, Home Depot and Mars as companies using Google Cloud to scale agentic artificial intelligence across operations. (blog.google) An AI agent is software that can take a goal, break it into steps and act across business systems with limited human prompting. Google’s bet is that companies will pay not just for the model that writes text, but for the surrounding controls that let fleets of agents work inside finance, sales, support and software teams. (reuters.com) That is a sharper enterprise pitch than last year’s emphasis on generative AI assistants for individual workers. In its Cloud Next 2026 overview, Google said “the Agentic Enterprise” is now in production and tied that message to infrastructure, security and workspace products across the stack. (cloud.google.com) Google paired the platform launch with scale numbers meant to show demand. The company said nearly 75% of Google Cloud customers now use its artificial intelligence products, and 330 customers processed more than 1 trillion tokens each over the past 12 months. (blog.google) The company is also trying to make agents easier to manage after they leave the demo stage. Google said the new platform adds governance, optimization and operational tooling, while Reuters reported the push would increase observability as more agent workflows move into production. (cloud.google.com) (reuters.com) Some of the customer examples were tightly tied to Google’s software stack. Home Depot said in January that it was expanding its partnership with Google Cloud to build agentic tools for shoppers and store associates, and Mars said on April 22 that Gemini Enterprise would become the primary artificial intelligence operating system for its global workforce. (corporate.homedepot.com) (googlecloudpresscorner.com) Google is making the case that the money in artificial intelligence will come from running agent workflows inside corporate systems for years, not from one-off chatbot trials. Cloud Next was its clearest signal yet that it wants to sell the plumbing, rules and monitoring around those agents as a core cloud product. (reuters.com)