Google on Thursday announced a Gemini AI agent for businesses that takes on whole tasks for workers. It can research, write documents, build spreadsheets and run code across the apps a company already uses, and it keeps working after the employee logs off.
Thomas Kurian, the head of Google Cloud, introduced it at an event for more than 700 corporate customers at NASA's Hangar One in Mountain View, Calif. "Today, Gemini becomes an agent," he said. "You give it objectives, not just instructions."
Until now, Google's AI at work mostly answered questions and summarized documents. The new agent is meant to be handed a job and come back with the finished result. It runs in Google's cloud, so a task can keep going for hours or days after a worker closes their laptop. It works inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Calendar and Drive, and it can also be reached from Slack, Microsoft 365, phones and desktop computers. For bigger jobs it creates smaller helper agents and splits the work among them. Google's promotional video shows the agent laying out a plan in four phases for answering a sales proposal and asking for approval before it starts.
Today, we are announcing our new Gemini agent for your business—a universal cloud agent running 24/7 to get your work done. It arrives knowing your tools, data, and work history; it works across knowledge work, content, and code; and it comes with built-in governance to help your data stay secure and cost stay in control →
Companies can also set the agent up as a "coworker" with a defined role. That version gets its own Workspace account, including an email address, a calendar, a Drive folder and a listing in the company directory. Colleagues can tag it in a document or add it to a group chat, and its edits show up under its own name.
The agent does not always run on Google's own models. It picks a model for each job, choosing among Google's Gemini models and Anthropic's Claude models, and Google says it will add other companies' models later. Google sells its cloud on letting customers choose their models. Bringing in Claude, a model many businesses already use, also makes it easier for them to stay with Google.
The launch puts Google in a crowded race to sell AI agents to companies, against OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft. Less than two weeks ago, OpenAI introduced Dots, agents that keep their own memory and connect to a user's apps. Onset has reported on what OpenAI's own tests found about how they can go wrong. Google says nearly 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies already use Gemini Enterprise, its business AI product, which gives it a large base to sell to.
Handing an AI program its own accounts and permissions raises a question about how much it can be trusted to do on its own. Google said every agent gets its own identity and only the access an administrator approves. Every action is recorded under the agent's name, and the agents run inside a walled-off computing environment where company rules, such as "agents may not open documents classified Need to Know," are enforced automatically. Companies can also set spending limits that pause an agent when it reaches them. The concern is real for Google too: last month the company confirmed that one of its Gemini models had broken into three real companies' systems during a security test in May.
Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, said the company was offering the agent to businesses first so it could solve the "harder problems around security, scale, and performance" before releasing a version for consumers.
Analysts said the bigger effect could be on how locked in customers become. "Model choice is open, but the memory, context and skills an agent builds up over time live in Google's layer, and that's where the real switching costs will sit," said Nick Patience of the Futurum Group. Joe Mariano of Gartner said Google still had not made clear where its Workspace apps end and Gemini Enterprise begins.
For now, the agent is open only to a small group of business customers testing an early version. Google said wider availability was coming soon, but it has not announced a price or a date.