Next '26: Building the agentic enterprise

Inspiration took center stage last week in Las Vegas at Google Cloud Next ‘26. Tens of thousands of attendees joined us at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center to explore the latest technologies and features helping big ideas become reality — and thousands of global customers and partners from a diverse array of industries and the public sector showcased the incredible things they are creating with AI. Walking the floor, it was clear enterprises are advancing well beyond using AI as a basic assistant. While last year was all about proving AI could handle enterprise tasks at scale, we’re now stepping into the era of the agentic enterprise, where AI agents proactively anticipate goals, reason through complexity, and orchestrate complex business processes. We are actually living this shift at Google Cloud, and our mission is to help you navigate your own journey and build for that future using the same AI-powered cloud technology that runs Google. 

At Google Cloud Next ‘26, we ushered in the agentic era with a unified architecture designed to deploy a global digital taskforce, securely and at scale. By integrating Gemini models across the entire stack — supported by our new 8th generation TPUs and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform — we are providing the high performance infrastructure, integrated data cloud, powerful AI platform, models, and security at every layer needed to turn autonomous action into a competitive advantage.

In case you missed the big event, you can check out an in-depth look from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian or check out the full list of all 260 announcements we made.

These advancements are helping organizations go from idea to impact faster, but the magic for me has been watching how quickly they are responding to industry challenges with market-leading solutions. Some 75% of Google Cloud customers are already using our AI products to power their business and, over the last 12 months, more than 230 of them processed more than 1 trillion tokens each. 

What our customers have built — and what they're doing with AI agents right now, at scale and across industries — is demonstrating how AI is being applied to forge entirely new ways to work, discover, and grow. Below, we’ll take a closer look at how this real-world value is coming to life. 

Retail

The best retail associates — those who know every product, are patient and helpful even if you’re picky, and always find exactly what you need — are a competitive advantage for any retailer lucky enough to hire them. Retailers are now deploying AI agents that make such expertise effectively boundless: available to every customer, on every channel, at any hour. These agents learn individual preferences, predict future needs, and deliver highly tailored recommendations and promotions that keep customers coming back.

Here’s how leading retailers are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• The Home Depot is building on its 10+ year partnership with Google Cloud and using Gemini Enterprise to power a suite of AI tools — from assistants like Magic Apron to new AI voice agents for customer service — delivering 'Orange Apron' expertise to shoppers online, on the phone and in the store for a truly seamless home improvement journey.

• Ulta is using the Universal Commerce Protocol to enable agentic shopping on Google surfaces while also using Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience to power its new personalized shopping assistant, Ulta AI.

• Macy’s has launched Ask Macy’s, a conversational AI shopping assistant built in just four weeks with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience that makes online shopping more seamless.

Consumer packaged goods

Developing and launching the right product for the right consumers in the right moment has traditionally relied on innovation, marketing, and supply chains that struggle to keep up with the speed of culture. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies are now deploying agentic AI to automate complex tasks across the entire value chain — from accurately predicting trends, enhancing research and development, streamlining distribution, and coordinating supply chains — to drive profitable growth and deliver consistent value to consumers.

Here’s how leading CPG companies are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• Mars is adopting Gemini Enterprise as its primary AI operating system for its global Associates to build sophisticated AI agents that streamline marketing, R&D, and enterprise search. Gemini Enterprise empowers Mars teams to automate complex tasks across its Petcare, Snacking, and Food & Nutrition segments.

• PepsiCo is collaborating with Google Cloud to strengthen its digital foundation and leverage Gemini Enterprise to build new digital capabilities spanning PepsiCo’s global operations, empowering its teams to make faster, data-driven decisions.

• Unilever is deploying agents built on Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform throughout its organization to supercharge demand gen, build stronger partnerships, and serve its 3.7 billion consumers.

Financial services

For decades, financial intelligence flowed from event to analysis: something happened, and then you understood it. Financial institutions are now inverting that sequence, deploying agents that surface market intelligence, manage risk, and reimagine how they deliver financial guidance. With these agents, finance is moving from focusing on the rear-view mirror to anticipating client needs before they even express them, delivering real-time, expert-driven insights , and providing concierge services that gain trust and loyalty.

Here’s how leading financial services organizations are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• Citi Wealth unveiled its new AI-powered experience, Citi Sky, that was built using Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and frontier models from Google DeepMind.

• BNY, one of the largest custody banks in the world, uses Gemini Enterprise to help accelerate deep research capabilities for the bank's global workforce.

• Starling Bank launched the Starling Assistant, an AI financial assistant for automating basic banking tasks, built with Google Gemini and run on Google Cloud.

Telecommunications

In telecommunications, AI agents are evolving to autonomously manage entire workflows — from real-time network healing to proactively resolving customer issues and monetizing network data for identity services. For instance, network agents can proactively detect an issue and orchestrate changes before anyone notices or customer support agents can help call center representatives deliver faster, more accurate responses. These capabilities are opening up new opportunities for providers to rethink how they better support both their customers and employees, driving more satisfying experiences across the board. 

Here’s how leading telecommunications companies are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• Vodafone Business is expanding its strategic partnership with Google Cloud through two new solutions to equip SMBs with advanced cybersecurity and applied agentic AI.

• Deutsche Telekom announced the development and implementation of MINDR, DT’s next-generation autonomous network solution, developed with Google’s Autonomous Network Operations framework, including Gemini models and Vertex AI.

• Virgin Media O2 had more than 20,000 data assets, many of which were untapped. Using the AI-powered Knowledge Catalog data governance platform, VMO2 is helping them activate this data to empower their global product teams.

Healthcare & life sciences

The healthcare and life sciences ecosystem is deploying agents that compress the distance between patients and needed care in ways that would have seemed implausible just a few years ago. Agents are accelerating drug discovery timelines, catching and resolving denied claims before they become costly disputes, and translating lab results that once arrived as inscrutable numbers into plain-language narratives patients can actually understand. Operational agents are also absorbing the scheduling, documentation, and research tasks that tax clinicians, researchers, and administrators alike, giving everyone back more time to focus on patients and outcomes.

Here’s how leading healthcare and life sciences organizations are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• Merck is deploying a Gemini Enterprise-powered “agentic engine” to enhance decision-making across its value chain — from early discovery, through clinical development and commercialization — to improve both the probability of success and time-to-market.

• CVS Health and Google Cloud partnered to launch Health100, an agentic AI "Health Concierge" platform that integrates data from wearables, electronic health records, and pharmacy claims to provide proactive, personalized care navigation for millions of consumers.

• The American Society of Clinical Oncology is using Gemini Enterprise to deliver trusted cancer expertise to 50,000 oncology professionals worldwide.

Media & entertainment

The media and entertainment industry has fundamentally shifted from experimentation to execution, with AI technologies and AI agents now being actively used in production, putting the best technology directly into the hands of creators and artists to supercharge their work and accelerate the media supply chain. With AI helping to augment creative processes, media and entertainment companies are already streamlining production timelines, modernizing and unlocking media archives, adapting and creating new types of content, and delivering more personalized audience experiences.

Here’s how leading media and entertainment companies are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• WPP is using Gemini Enterprise to reshape creative and production, releasing an AI-led campaign every four days, at twice the speed, with 2.5x more value for clients due to its ability to quickly test assets in market and revise creative. WPP has built thousands of agents so far on Gemini.

• Groupe CANAL+ is using Gemini’s multimodality to process video, audio, and text to automate in-depth asset categorization. They are also providing their production partners and creative teams with Veo to generate scenes impossible to produce using traditional methods.

• Quickplay announced the full-scale deployment of Gray Media's next-generation streaming platform, powered by Google Cloud’s AI, now live across all of Gray’s 113 television markets. The integration allows Gray to manage 1,300 digital touchpoints with real-time viewer intelligence, delivering hyper-local news and entertainment to 37% of U.S. TV households.

Games

The era of AI in games has moved decisively from the lab to production, creating "Living Games" by infusing AI technology and agents across the entire studio. For development, AI automates the drudgery so developers can focus on high value creative endeavors. For the business, AI is optimizing everything from marketing to live operations, personalizing the player journey to boost acquisition and retention. And for players, AI unlocks a new dimension of gameplay: holding unscripted conversations with dynamic characters, building entire worlds with a few keystrokes, and teaming up with intelligent AI companions that learn and adapt to their playstyle.

Here’s how leading gamemakers are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• Capcom is using Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and its proprietary technology to build playtesting and predictive agents that improve the gameplay experience, freeing developers for creative work.

• 10Six Games is using Google Gemini models to deliver a fundamentally new player experience in its new game, You vs. Zombies, rooted in human design.

• SQUARE ENIX uses Agent Platform to power Gemini-based companions into Dragon Quest X Online that provide real-time gameplay support and interactive storytelling.

Manufacturing

Manufacturers are building the factory of the future by harnessing the power of AI to connect their IT, operational technology (OT), and engineering technology (ET) data. Establishing a unified data environment enables a seamless data flow, creating the foundation necessary for AI agent deployment across product development and the shop floor. This shift replaces reactive workflows with a unified digital thread that synchronizes operations in real time, allowing agents to manage high-stakes tasks. For example, they can use digital twins to run thousands of virtual simulations, secure the OT landscape by flagging anomalies before they become disruptions, and uncover hidden data relationships to coordinate supply chains faster than any human reporting cycle allows.

Here’s how leading manufacturers are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• GE Appliances is democratizing AI by putting it in the hands of the people closest to the work, with more than 800 AI agents deployed across manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain.
• Tata Steel is using Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform to build a fleet of more than 300 autonomous AI agents, transforming the company’s global operations by automating complex workflows, enhancing workplace safety, and democratizing data-driven decision-making.
• Valeo, a provider of automotive technology, is deploying Gemini for Workspace to its entire, 100,000-person global workforce. This deployment follows the successful integration of Gemini Code Assist, with now more than 35% of Valeo's code generated by AI, accelerating and enhancing software development cycles for its engineering teams.

Power and energy

Power and energy companies are using agentic AI and advanced computing to build smarter, more resilient, and sustainable infrastructure. In planning, engineers work with AI agents to generate complex substation designs, reducing months of work into minutes. As projects move into construction and operational phases, AI agents are improving construction work planning, reducing costs and speeding up work. Similarly, they’re automating safety briefings for field technicians and detecting methane leaks in real time. On the trade floor, agents are navigating market volatility for energy trading and risk management, balancing renewable loads — ensuring every megawatt delivered is cleaner, safer, and more reliable.

Here’s how leading power and energy companies are already using AI agents to transform their business: 

• The U.S. Department of Energy National Labs use the “AI co-scientist” built on TPUs as a research partner, generating and validating new hypotheses to accelerate scientific discovery.

• AXIA Energia, Brazil’s largest power company, helps prevent power outages for millions of customers by running advanced AI-powered weather modeling on TPU clusters. .

• CTC Global is bringing AI directly to transmission lines to enable a grid that can sense its health in real-time, helping expand grid capacity and drive affordability. 

What I saw at Next '26 from the customers my colleagues and I work with every day left me genuinely inspired and energized. If you have ideas about what's possible for your business, we are here to explore them with you. You can start here and contact us for more information.