Google doubles down on agents

Google is recasting its cloud business around artificial intelligence agents, making digital assistants a core enterprise product rather than a side feature. (reuters.com) At Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas on April 22, Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai told customers and investors that agents are central to how Google plans to make money from artificial intelligence in enterprise software. Reuters reported the company pitched agents as tools that can complete work across systems with less human input. (reuters.com) Google also used the event to show how far it has pushed the same tools inside its own walls. Pichai said 75% of Google’s new code is now generated by artificial intelligence and then approved by engineers, up from 50% last fall. (blog.google) An artificial intelligence agent is software that can take a goal, break it into steps, call other tools, and act with limited supervision. Google’s pitch is that companies will need systems to build, monitor, and govern large groups of those agents, not just chatbots that answer questions. (zdnet.com) That is where the new Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform fits. Google said the platform is meant to manage fleets of agents at scale, with controls for orchestration, security, and governance as companies move from experiments to production deployments. (zdnet.com) TechCrunch reported Google made a deliberate product choice by aiming the new platform at information technology teams and technical staff rather than only line-of-business users. That puts the tool closer to infrastructure software than a simple no-code assistant builder. (techcrunch.com) Google paired the software push with new Tensor Processing Units, its in-house artificial intelligence chips, as part of a broader argument that it can sell the full stack from hardware to models to workplace apps. Google’s Cloud Next roundup said the company introduced eighth-generation Tensor Processing Units alongside the agent platform. (blog.google) Pichai said Google is moving from assisted coding to “agentic workflows” inside the company, where engineers direct autonomous software task forces instead of writing every step by hand. In the same update, he said paid monthly active users for Gemini Enterprise grew 40% quarter over quarter in the first quarter. (blog.google) The competitive backdrop is crowded. Reuters said Google is trying to turn its artificial intelligence lead in research and infrastructure into revenue while facing enterprise competition from Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce, and other software vendors racing to define the agent market. (reuters.com) Google’s message on April 22 was that the next cloud sale is not just a model or a chatbot subscription. It is a managed system of agents, chips, and controls that Google now says it is using on itself first. (reuters.com)