Cloud Next ‘26 Opening Keynote

Year: 2026 · ▶ Watch on YouTube

Thomas Kurian (CEO, Google Cloud) · Sundar Pichai (CEO, Google and Alphabet) · Erica Chuong (Product Manager, Applied AI Forward Deployed Engineering) · Shaun White (3x Olympic Gold Medalist & Founder, The Snow League) · Jason Davenport (Google Cloud) · Amin Vahdat (SVP & Chief Technologist, AI & Infrastructure) · Karthik Narain (Chief Product & Business Officer, Google Cloud) · Yasmeen Ahmad (Managing Director, Product Management, Data & AI Cloud) · Francis deSouza (COO, Google Cloud and President, Security Products, Google Cloud) · Yinon Costica (Co-Founder & VP of Product, Wiz) · Carrie Tharp (GTM COO & VP of Customer Experience, Google Cloud) · Patrick Marleau (Senior Product Manager) · Yulie Kwon Kim (VP of Product, Google Workspace, Google Cloud)

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Segments (14)

  • 00:02:34 · Opening: The Agentic Era is Here — Thomas Kurian
    • Introduces the shift from AI adoption to transformation and the concept of the ‘Agentic Enterprise’ powered by a unified stack.
  • 00:04:28 · Investing in the Future of AI — Sundar Pichai
    • Announces massive capital expenditure increases to build out AI infrastructure and shares how Google is using its own agentic workflows internally.
  • 00:10:05 · The Agentic Enterprise Blueprint — Thomas Kurian
    • Outlines the five layers of the Agentic Enterprise Blueprint: AI Hypercomputer, Agentic Data Cloud, Agentic Defense, Agentic Platform and Models, and Agentic Taskforce.
  • 00:11:12 · Demo: Orchestrating an Agentic Taskforce — Erica Chuong
    • Demonstrates how multiple specialized agents can collaborate to analyze trends, identify inventory, and orchestrate a product relaunch campaign.
  • 00:24:09 · The AI Hypercomputer — Amin Vahdat
    • Details the infrastructure layer, announcing new TPU 8t and 8i chips, Google Cloud Axion CPUs, and the Virgo Network for massive-scale training.
  • 00:49:42 · The Agentic Data Cloud — Karthik Narain
    • Introduces the Agentic Data Cloud, featuring the Knowledge Catalog, Smart Storage, Data Agent Kit, and the Cross-Cloud Lakehouse to unify data across clouds.
  • 00:58:47 · Demo: The Agentic Data Cloud in Action — Yasmeen Ahmad
    • Showcases how the Agentic Data Cloud can find hidden connections in data, connect to data in AWS, and generate revenue forecasts in minutes.
  • 01:04:36 · Agentic Defense — Francis deSouza
    • Explains the need for autonomous security in the AI era and introduces the Gemini-native Agentic SOC and the acquisition of Wiz.
  • 01:08:05 · Demo: Redefining Security with Wiz — Yinon Costica
    • Demonstrates how Wiz’s AI agents (Red, Green, Blue) provide visibility, find and validate risks, and automate remediation across the AI stack.
  • 01:16:16 · Agentic Taskforce: Customer Experience — Carrie Tharp
    • Introduces the Agentic Taskforce for Customer Experience, designed to unify the customer journey from discovery to service.
  • 01:21:47 · Demo: Gemini for Customer Experience — Patrick Marleau
    • Shows a live voice agent handling a customer support call, including multilingual capabilities and seamless updates via CX Agent Studio.
  • 01:26:46 · Agentic Taskforce: Employee Productivity — Yulie Kwon Kim
    • Announces Workspace Intelligence, a unified intelligence layer that eliminates context fragmentation across Google Workspace apps.
  • 01:33:46 · Closing: The Future is Open — Thomas Kurian
    • Summarizes the announcements and reiterates Google Cloud’s commitment to an open AI ecosystem, highlighting key partners and customer successes.
  • 00:34:33 · Special Guest: AI in Sports — Shaun White
    • Introduces how AI is changing sports and sets up a demo with Google Cloud engineers to analyze his snowboarding tricks.

Products Announced (21)

  • 00:10:03 · Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (New)
    • Low-Code Agent Studio for building agents · Agent Registry for managing and governing agents · Skills and Tools Registry for reusable components
    • Preview
  • 00:12:38 · Gemini 3.1 Pro (Preview)
    • Advanced reasoning model · Optimized for complex workflow orchestration · Bridges strategy and autonomous execution
    • Preview
  • 00:13:02 · Gemini 3.1 Flash Image (Preview)
    • Generates high-fidelity visual assets · Also known as ‘Nano Banana 2’
    • Preview
  • 00:13:12 · Veo 3.1 Lite (Preview)
    • Cost-effective video model · Designed for high-volume video applications
    • Preview
  • 00:13:20 · Lyria 3 Pro (Preview)
    • State-of-the-art model for music generation · Enterprise and professional-grade audio
    • Preview
  • 00:13:36 · Anthropic Models on Google Cloud (General Availability)
    • Includes Claude Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku · New support for Claude Opus 4.7
    • General Availability
  • 00:42:25 · TPU 8t and TPU 8i (New)
    • TPU 8t optimized for training · TPU 8i optimized for inference · 8th generation Tensor Processing Units
    • New
  • 00:45:07 · Google Cloud Axion (New)
    • Custom-designed Arm CPU · Up to 2x better price-performance vs x86 · Designed for general-purpose workloads
    • New
  • 00:45:40 · NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 (Coming Soon)
    • Massive exaFLOPS of inference performance per rack · Offered among the first cloud providers
    • Coming Soon
  • 00:46:10 · Google Cloud Managed Lustre (New)
    • High-performance parallel file system · Supports throughput up to 10 terabytes/second
    • New
  • 00:46:18 · Virgo Network (Coming Soon)
    • Doubles connectivity beyond the superpod · Connects up to 134,000 TPUs · Delivers near-linear scaling performance
    • Coming Soon
  • 00:50:51 · Knowledge Catalog (Preview)
    • Universal context engine for the enterprise · Natively integrates with BigQuery · Automatically extracts entities and maps relationships from unstructured data
    • Preview
  • 00:53:06 · Data Agent Kit (Preview)
    • Gemini-powered data science authoring experience · Integrates with existing IDEs, notebooks, and terminals · Autonomously builds pipelines and deploys models from intent
    • Preview
  • 00:54:34 · Lightning Engine for Apache Spark (New)
    • Up to 2x price-performance over previous market leader · Accelerates Apache Spark workloads
    • New
  • 00:55:45 · Cross-Cloud Lakehouse (Preview)
    • Activates data across clouds (GCP, AWS, Azure) · Built on open Apache Iceberg standard · Provides low-latency direct connectivity without moving data
    • Preview
  • 01:05:22 · Gemini-Native Agentic SOC (New)
    • Moves heavy lifting of security analysis to AI · Turns 30-minute investigations into 60-second resolutions
    • New
  • 01:05:36 · Threat Hunting & Detection Agents (Coming Soon)
    • Proactively sweeps environments for risks · Operates at a scale and speed no human team can match
    • Coming Soon
  • 01:07:08 · Google Cloud + Wiz Partnership (New)
    • Wiz team joins Google Cloud · Creates a new security posture for the agentic enterprise · Extends protection to on-premises and multi-cloud assets
    • New
  • 01:17:00 · Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience (New)
    • Unifies the entire customer journey · Includes pre-built Shopping & Food Ordering Agents · Features Agent Assist for live interactions
    • New
  • 01:27:26 · Workspace Intelligence (General Availability)
    • Unified, real-time understanding powering agentic work · Eliminates context fragmentation across Workspace apps · Features ‘Ask Gemini’ to surface urgent tasks and context
    • General Availability
  • 01:32:48 · Rapid Enterprise Migration (Preview)
    • Moves organizations from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace · Up to 5x faster migration · Includes complex and finance teams
    • Preview

Customer Stories (29)

  • 00:13:55 · Apple — Collaborating as a preferred cloud provider to develop next-gen Apple Foundation Models based on Gemini technology for Apple Intelligence features.
  • 00:14:34 · Leading Organizations (Logo Wall) — Innovating with the Agent Platform, including Adobe, Atlassian, Bayer, Bloomberg, Box, Citi, Deloitte, Ford, Goldman Sachs, and many more.
  • 00:14:43 · Citi Wealth — Unveiled ‘Citi Sky’, an AI-powered member of the wealth team, to provide global intelligence to clients.
  • 00:15:15 · Honeywell — Generating billions of insights for building management by training digital twins on product specifications with Gemini Enterprise.
  • 00:15:25 · Liverpool — Bringing in-store service online with a new AI shopping assistant, projecting a 10x ROI.
  • 00:15:37 · NASA — Using Gemini Enterprise agents to power flight readiness and ensure astronaut safety for the Artemis II mission.
  • 00:22:11 · Virgin Voyages — Using Gemini Enterprise for ‘Project Rovee’, a personal concierge AI to enhance the sailor experience and improve operational efficiency.
  • 00:41:08 · AXIA Energia — Using TPU clusters for advanced weather modeling to predict and prevent power outages for millions of customers in Brazil.
  • 00:41:31 · Thinking Machines — Using NVIDIA-based infrastructure to power ‘Tinker’, an open platform for reinforcement learning and fine-tuning models.
  • 00:41:43 · Woven by Toyota — Achieved 42% faster visual-language model training to predict complex traffic events.
  • 00:41:51 · US Department of Energy — Powering AI co-scientists across all 17 national labs to accelerate scientific discovery.
  • 00:42:01 · Boston Dynamics — Training the future of robotics on the AI Hypercomputer, deploying flexible vision-language models.
  • 00:47:20 · Citadel Securities — Using Google Cloud’s research environment with TPUs to run workloads 2-4x faster at 30% lower cost.
  • 00:51:54 · Virgin Media O2 — Using Knowledge Catalog to document and activate over 20,000 untapped data assets.
  • 00:55:10 · Flipkart, Lowe’s, Meesho — Accelerating Apache Spark workloads with the new Lightning Engine.
  • 01:06:12 · CME Group — Using a unified stack of Mandiant, Security Command Center, and Google SecOps to protect the world’s largest derivatives system.
  • 01:14:32 · Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) — Securing critical utilities for 4 million residents ahead of the LA 2028 games.
  • 01:14:40 · Singapore’s CSA — Enabling proactive defense against advanced digital threats.
  • 01:14:46 · DBS — Strengthening security posture with multi-layered, cloud-native protection and real-time response.
  • 01:14:58 · Morgan Stanley — Deploying Google Cloud security capabilities as part of its evolving cloud strategy to extend visibility and control.
  • 01:17:44 · Papa Johns — Building a hyper-personalized ordering system with the Food Ordering Agent to remember preferences and speed up delivery.
  • 01:18:04 · Best Buy — Using Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience to bring technical expertise online, guiding shoppers through complex purchases and issue resolution.
  • 01:18:56 · The Home Depot — Powering the ‘Magic Apron’ assistant with Gemini Enterprise to blend digital and in-store channels and improve customer service.
  • 01:20:45 · Reliance Retail — Transforming retail in India with a shopping agent that guides customers through purchases, driving more revenue per visit.
  • 01:31:50 · Colgate-Palmolive — Using AI agents built on Gemini to turn data into new product concepts in minutes, not months.
  • 01:32:16 · Natura — Accelerating data-driven reporting by 10x with custom agents (Gemini Gems).
  • 01:32:23 · Korean Air — Assisting over 22,000 global employees with complex operational and care tasks using AI agents.
  • 01:32:32 · Compass Real Estate — Using Gemini to manage tasks for employees, freeing them to focus on valuable client relationships.
  • 01:33:58 · Unilever — Using Google Cloud’s agentic foundation to supercharge demand generation and build stronger retailer partnerships.

Competitor Mentions / Comparisons (6)

  • 00:56:13 · vs AWS — Mentioned as a location where customer data resides, which the Cross-Cloud Lakehouse can connect to without data movement.
  • 00:56:13 · vs Azure — Mentioned as a location where customer data resides, which the Cross-Cloud Lakehouse can connect to without data movement.
  • 01:32:57 · vs Microsoft 365 — Announced a new ‘Rapid Enterprise Migration’ tool to move customers from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace up to 5x faster.
  • 00:56:17 · vs Salesforce — Listed as a zero-copy partner for the Agentic Data Cloud.
  • 00:56:17 · vs SAP — Listed as a zero-copy partner for the Agentic Data Cloud.
  • 01:09:56 · vs OpenAI — Mentioned as a model provider whose agents can be managed within the Wiz security platform.

Benchmarks Shown (20)

  • 00:03:07 · Google Cloud AI Product Adoption: ~75%
    • N/A
  • 00:05:35 · Google Capex Increase: Nearly 6x
    • From $31B in 2022 to a projected $175B-$185B in 2026.
  • 00:06:15 · Internal AI-Generated Code: ~75%
    • Up from 50% in the previous fall.
  • 00:07:00 · Internal Code Migration Speed: 6x faster
    • Compared to a year ago, using a system of agents.
  • 00:07:41 · Internal Marketing Workflow Efficiency: 70% faster
    • Also resulted in a 20% increase in conversion.
  • 00:08:22 · Internal Security Threat Mitigation: Over 90%
    • Using security operations center agents.
  • 00:23:25 · Virgin Voyages Production Timeline: Up to 60%
    • By using Google Cloud’s AI stack.
  • 00:30:28 · Signal Iduna Adoption: 80%
    • Within weeks of launch.
  • 00:30:45 · Signal Iduna Weekly Active Users: 400%
    • In Q4 2025 with Gemini Enterprise.
  • 00:31:07 · KPMG Adoption: 90%
    • In the first month.
  • 00:41:45 · Woven by Toyota Training Speed: 42%
    • N/A
  • 00:43:13 · TPU 8t Performance: Nearly 3x
    • Over previous generations.
  • 00:45:13 · Google Cloud Axion Price-Performance: Up to 2x
    • Versus comparable x86 instances.
  • 00:45:57 · NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 Performance: 10x
    • N/A
  • 00:47:00 · Virgo Network Bandwidth: 4x
    • Over the previous generation.
  • 00:48:06 · Citadel Securities Workload Speed: 2-4x faster
    • With 30% lower cost using TPUs.
  • 00:54:43 · Lightning Engine Price-Performance: Up to 2x
    • Over the previous market leader.
  • 01:05:30 · Agentic SOC Resolution Time: From 30 minutes to 60 seconds
    • N/A
  • 01:06:04 · Dark Web Intelligence Accuracy: 98%
    • N/A
  • 01:33:00 · Rapid Enterprise Migration Speed: Up to 5x faster
    • For moving from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace.

Commitments (1)

  • 00:05:27 (2026) — Google plans to invest between $175 billion and $185 billion in total capex in 2026.

Notable Quotes (6)

  • 00:03:05 — Thomas Kurian:

    We saw transformation. Nearly 75% of Google Cloud customers now leverage our AI products to power their businesses.

  • 00:04:44 — Sundar Pichai:

    In fact, this Sunday, I’m celebrating my Google-versary. 22 years, and I’m still feeling lucky.

  • 00:05:14 — Sundar Pichai:

    As we move into the agentic era, we are taking this to the next level.

  • 00:10:50 — Thomas Kurian:

    Intelligence plus automation must deliver value.

  • 00:40:52 — Amin Vahdat:

    Compute is no longer defined by a chip. Compute is the entire datacenter.

  • 01:35:53 — Thomas Kurian:

    We believe the future of AI must be open.

Visual Signals

On-screen (21)

  • 00:02:25 · Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud
    • Introduces the main speaker for the keynote.
  • 00:02:32 · Google Cloud Next '26
    • Official branding for the event.
  • 00:03:03 · transformation
    • Highlights the key theme of the opening segment.
  • 00:03:10 · ~75% of Google Cloud customers leverage our AI products
    • Key adoption metric supporting the transformation theme.
  • 00:04:29 · Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet
    • Introduces the pre-recorded message from the Alphabet CEO.
  • 00:05:29 · 5x
    • Visual representation of the massive increase in capital expenditure for AI infrastructure.
  • 00:06:24 · Agentic workflows
    • Title card for Sundar Pichai’s segment on internal AI usage.
  • 00:10:03 · Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform
    • Major new product announcement.
  • 00:10:45 · Agentic Enterprise Blueprint
    • Visualizes the core strategic framework for Google Cloud’s AI offerings.
  • 00:13:49 · State-of-the-art models in Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform
    • Announces a suite of new and updated Gemini and partner models.
  • 00:14:20 · Apple logo
    • Announces a major partnership with Apple for their foundation models.
  • 00:25:26 · Interior design trends & stock analysis
    • Title card for Erica Chuong’s demo, showing the business problem being solved.
  • 00:34:43 · Shaun White, 3x Olympic Gold Medalist & Founder, The Snow League
    • Introduces the special guest speaker.
  • 00:40:29 · AI Hypercomputer
    • Title card for the infrastructure segment of the keynote.
  • 00:40:53 · Compute is the entire datacenter
    • Key strategic statement about Google’s infrastructure philosophy.

Stage (15)

  • 00:00:00 · High-energy, fast-paced intro video with music and abstract graphics, culminating in the Google Cloud Next ‘26 logo.
  • 00:02:17 · Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, walks on stage to applause.
  • 00:04:28 · Transition to a pre-recorded video message from Sundar Pichai.
  • 00:10:05 · Thomas Kurian returns to the stage after Sundar’s video.
  • 00:11:12 · Erica Chuong is introduced and comes on stage for a demo.
  • 00:24:09 · Amin Vahdat is introduced and walks on stage.
  • 00:34:33 · Shaun White is introduced with a dramatic smoke effect on stage.
  • 00:49:42 · Karthik Narain is introduced and walks on stage.
  • 00:58:47 · Yasmeen Ahmad is introduced and appears at a demo station.
  • 01:04:21 · Francis deSouza is introduced and walks on stage.
  • 01:07:47 · Yinon Costica is introduced and shakes hands with Francis deSouza on stage.
  • 01:16:08 · Carrie Tharp is introduced and walks on stage.
  • 01:21:38 · Patrick Marleau is introduced and appears at a demo station.
  • 01:26:31 · Yulie Kwon Kim is introduced and walks on stage.
  • 01:38:41 · The stage fills with bright lights and music as the keynote concludes.

Visual demos (6)

  • 00:11:12 · A demo of the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform orchestrating a product relaunch.
    • A UI showing multiple agents (Market Research, Data Insights, Product Strategy) being coordinated. The demo showed the agents analyzing trends, identifying ‘dead stock’ inventory, and generating a full relaunch strategy with pricing and media recommendations. It concluded with the Dev Agent being tasked to build a new landing page.
  • 00:35:44 · A sports analytics demo analyzing a Shaun White snowboarding trick.
    • A video of Shaun White’s ‘switch cab double flip 1440’ was analyzed. The UI showed a 3D pose estimation model tracking his body, a stats panel with flight dynamics and rotational velocity, and a ‘ribbon overlay’ visualizing the corkscrew motion of the trick.
  • 00:58:58 · A demo of the Agentic Data Cloud analyzing a new food trend.
    • A user in Gmail receives an alert about a ‘Midnight Swirl’ trend. The demo shows how the Knowledge Catalog connects disparate PDFs (a recipe and a supplier manual) to find a hidden soy allergen. It then uses the Cross-Cloud Lakehouse to join data from GCP and AWS S3 to create a customer target list, and finally uses the Data Agent Kit to generate a revenue forecast notebook.
  • 01:08:36 · A security demo using the Wiz AI-Application Protection Platform.
    • The Wiz UI showed an inventory of cloud and AI resources. The ‘Security Graph’ visualized an attack path from the internet to a sensitive database via a vulnerable AI agent. The ‘Red Agent’ validated the risk, and the ‘Green Agent’ automated the remediation steps, including suggesting code fixes and assigning tasks.
  • 01:21:47 · A demo of Gemini for Customer Experience with a voice agent.
    • A user calls YouTube TV support. A voice agent answers, understands the request for a ‘sports only’ plan, and sends a link via SMS. The agent then seamlessly switches to Spanish to explain the plan to the user’s father-in-law. The demo also showed the CX Agent Studio UI where a new ‘Promotions’ agent was created and configured with business logic in minutes.
  • 01:28:03 · A demo of Workspace Intelligence in Google Chat and Slides.
    • A user in Google Chat uses ‘Ask Gemini’ to find a specific chart in a playbook from a previous quarter. Workspace Intelligence finds the correct document and chart. The user then asks it to create a new slide deck using a specific skill, which it generates instantly within a ‘Canvas’ mode inside the chat interface.

Key Topics

Agentic Enterprise · Generative AI · Unified AI Stack · AI Hypercomputer · TPU · Agentic Data Cloud · Cross-Cloud Data · AI Security · Agentic Defense · Customer Experience AI · Employee Productivity · Google Workspace · Gemini Models · Open Ecosystem

Takeaways

  • Google Cloud is positioning itself for the ‘Agentic Era’, where AI moves from being a tool to an autonomous workforce that orchestrates complex business processes.
  • The core strategy is the ‘Agentic Enterprise Blueprint’, a fully integrated, five-layer stack from custom silicon (TPU 8t/8i, Axion) to pre-built agentic taskforces.
  • A major focus is on unifying data with the ‘Agentic Data Cloud’ and ‘Cross-Cloud Lakehouse’, enabling AI to reason over data in GCP, AWS, and Azure without costly migrations.
  • Security is being automated to match the speed of AI, with ‘Agentic Defense’ and the Wiz acquisition providing autonomous threat detection and remediation.
  • Google is productizing its own internal AI transformation, offering solutions like Gemini for Customer Experience and Workspace Intelligence that mirror how Google improves its own operations.
  • The platform emphasizes openness, supporting a wide range of models (Gemini, Anthropic), hardware (TPU, NVIDIA), and partners to avoid vendor lock-in.
  • Low-code and no-code tools like Agent Studio and the Data Agent Kit are designed to empower every employee, not just developers, to become AI builders.
  • Significant investments in a global AI Hypercomputer, including the new Virgo network, are being made to provide the massive scale required for training and serving next-generation AI.