Google launches enterprise agents

Google has launched Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, a new Google Cloud product for companies that want to build and manage fleets of artificial intelligence agents. (cloud.google.com) Google announced the platform at Cloud Next ’26 on April 22, saying it combines Vertex AI’s model and agent tools with new features for integration, orchestration, DevOps and security. Google also described it as the foundation for what it calls the “agentic enterprise.” (cloud.google.com) In plain terms, an AI agent is software that can take a goal like answering a customer request or updating a record, call other tools, and complete multiple steps with limited human input. Google said its platform is meant to give companies one place to build those agents, connect them to business systems and apply governance controls. (docs.cloud.google.com) The launch puts Google more directly against OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for enterprise AI software, where companies are buying tools for coding, customer support and internal automation. Bloomberg reported that Google pitched the new products as part of an effort to challenge both rivals in business sales. (bloomberg.com) Google’s pitch is not just software. Reuters reported that Google Cloud is also creating a $750 million fund to help consulting firms including McKinsey, Accenture and Deloitte deploy agent systems for clients, tying the product launch to a services push. (usnews.com) Google said the platform includes a new Agent Studio for low-code building, an upgraded Agent Development Kit for code-first teams, and access to models including Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.1 Flash Image and Lyria 3. Those details matter because large companies usually need both business users and software teams to work on the same systems. (cloud.google.com, blog.google) The timing comes with questions about Google’s own product sprawl. The Los Angeles Times reported on April 22 that Google leaders were worried the company was trailing Anthropic and OpenAI in AI coding tools and were trying to unite overlapping efforts under one banner. (latimes.com) Google has framed the new platform as an answer to that kind of fragmentation. Sundar Pichai said companies are moving from asking whether they can build an agent to asking how to manage thousands of them, and Google positioned the platform as the control layer for that job. (blog.google) What happens next is less about whether Google can demo agents in Las Vegas and more about whether large customers will standardize on Google’s stack instead of mixing tools from OpenAI, Anthropic and consultants. The company’s new platform is built to make that decision easier to centralize. (cloud.google.com, usnews.com)