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It was a great day out at Google Cloud's London Summit yesterday. As you would expect AI (especially AI agents) featured strongly, with Google outlining the breadth of its AI centric strategy. At its core was the theme of interoperability, Google is not only seeking to push firms to its Gemini models and Vertex platform, but to be the base for organisations to build and host any type of AI model or AI agent. Whilst all the hyperscalers have such aspirations Google has doubled down on this. A key differentiator is its A2A protocol, which will allow AI agents to communicate with each other, securely exchange information, and coordinate actions.
On the UK front we heard from a number of customers including Starling Bank, who launched a GenAI banking chatbot using Gemini that alllows userd to query their spending habits, and supermarket Morrisons who has developed a product finder app using Big Query and Google Gemini to enable customers to find items across physical stores. Google is also supporting the Imperial War Museum (in partnership with Capgemini) using AI to transcribe 20k hours of historical recordings to bring history to life.
We also had a surprise visit from Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, who outlined a new partnership with Google Cloud aimed at ridding the taxpayer of the ‘ball and chain’ of legacy tech contracts and aiming to upskill 100k civil servants in tech and AI. Kyle was keen to embrace his relationship with big tech, in a not-so-subtle dig at the tabloids, and told UK tech suppliers to “bring your best ideas, your best tech, and your best price” to the negotiating table, in bid to secure “a new deal for buying tech for the British taxpayer”.
Whilst many of Google Clouds highlighted products and offerings were not exactly new, they demonstrated the breadth of how the firm is applying AI across the stack, from its infrastructure layer built on its codeveloped (with Nvidia) TPU chips, to its Gemini models, Vertex AI platform and of course its many AI agents that sit at the top of the stack. It has pre-built a number of agents to get clients up and running quickly, supported through its Agentforce platform, enabling no code deployment and management of multiple AI agents. We also saw some attention given to both data sovereignty (which everyone agrees remains nascent in UK) and cybersecurity, though AI stole the show as usual.
The key takeaway is that Google Cloud’s AI offerings are maturing, as is its presence in the UK and especially the public sector. It plans to invest substantially in growing its UK presence, as well as backing UK startups through equity free accelerators. It is also investing substantially in its personnel, seeking to be an end-to-end provider from AI ideation through to prototyping and implementation. SI partners are still going to play a crucial role however, with its commitments to strengthening its technology ecosystem evident throughout the day.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 00:09