Google is turning Gemini into an AI agent that can plan work, execute tasks and operate across business apps and systems, the company announced on Thursday at a Google Cloud event, as reported by TechCrunch. The unified agent answers questions and also gets things done on the user's behalf from a single interface.
The launch marks a strategic shift in the enterprise AI race, moving Gemini from a conversational assistant into a system that takes ownership of assigned work. Google said it will focus on businesses first before rolling the agent out to consumers, a choice meant to solve what CEO Sundar Pichai called the harder problems around security, scale and performance.
What the Gemini agent can do
According to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, the agent can be given objectives, not just instructions: it plans the work, uses custom skills and tools, and connects to internal business systems to reach its goals. It can also delegate to subagents and pick the best AI model for each task by default, while users can override that choice, starting with third-party models such as Anthropic's Claude.
Google said the agent connects to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Jira, Confluence, Git, BigQuery, Databricks, Postgres, Snowflake and other systems, and can work securely with any Model Context Protocol server inside or outside a company's network. Users follow progress from a tasks inbox that shows the agent's reasoning, subagent delegation, skills, code and status.
Gemini Enterprise adoption and a new workplace identity
At the event's start, Pichai said Gemini has more than 1 billion monthly active users, and that nearly 90% of Fortune 100 businesses now use Gemini Enterprise at work. That corporate reach is why Google is launching the agent for businesses first.
Notably, the AI gets its own Workspace account, as if it were another co-worker, with its own email address and context. It knows who is on which team, their time zones, who approves items and what is on people's calendars, and users can tag it, email it, share with it or add it to a group chat. As it acts, it writes an audit trail attributed to the agent rather than a person.
