Google Cloud Next ’26: The Highlights

Our team just got back from Google Cloud Next ’26, and the word is ‘eye-opening.’

To get you up to speed, we’ve prepped five main pillars.

Four key takeaways each.

Let’s go!

Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform & App

Google just expanded Vertex AI into the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, a complete hub for building autonomous AI.

1. Create agents via low-code tools or the Agent Development Kit, powered by top-tier models like Gemini 3.1 Pro and Claude 4.7.
2. Agents can now securely run in the background for days, using long-term memory to grind through complex tasks completely on their own.
3. Everything is locked down with strict cryptographic IDs and prompt injection defenses.
4. Humans manage the entire workflow through the Gemini Enterprise App’s daily command center.

Workspace Intelligence

Google Workspace just moved from a toolset to an active system that understands your daily workflows like never before.

1. Google Chat is now your front door. Pull data and control third-party apps like Asana and HubSpot without switching tabs.
2. Client-side encryption means even Google’s own AI can’t read your files if you don’t want it to.
3. Drive Projects and Gmail’s AI Inbox organize your data so your agents have the exact context they need.
4. Build interactive dashboards directly in Sheets, or generate fully editable, on-brand decks in Slides in one pass.

Agentic Data Cloud

Google’s data layer is no longer just digital storage. It’s become an active “System of Action” built specifically for AI agents.

1. Developers get specialized AI assistants to handle pipelines and monitor backend infrastructure 24/7.
2. Knowledge Catalog replaces Dataplex, automatically organizing data and unstructured files from platforms like SAP and ServiceNow.
3. BigQuery keeps performance steady while dropping your costs by 34%.
4. Using Apache Iceberg, your agents can query data directly inside AWS, Azure, or Snowflake without moving it or paying extraction fees.

Security

AI is changing how attackers operate, so Google partnered with Wiz to build a much tighter, much more unified defense.

1. Specialized agents take over threat hunting, write security rules, and cut alert investigation time from 30 minutes down to just 60 seconds.
2. Wiz brings its own team of AI agents to test risks, assess potential damage, and guide your team through exact fixes across your multicloud setups.
3. Upgraded firewalls now react at machine speeds to catch fast-moving malware.
4. You can now run Gemini completely offline in air-gapped environments for strict data privacy.

TPUs & Virgo Network

None of these AI agents run without serious hardware, so Google just rolled out its 8th-generation TPUs and the Virgo network to power them.

1. The new TPU 8t for training and TPU 8i for inference double your performance per watt while virtually removing memory bottlenecks.
2. GKE Agent Sandbox instantly spins up 300 secure environments per second, letting your team run massive, parallel workloads without any lag.
3. The Virgo network treats the entire data center like one giant machine, cutting base latency by 40%.
4. New C4N and M4N compute instances are built to deal with the sheer volume of AI data, processing up to 95 million packets per second.