Google releases new AI agents to challenge OpenAI and Anthropic

Alphabet Inc.'s Google unveiled a slew of tools to build AI agents aimed at helping companies automate tasks in the tech giant's latest attempt to take on OpenAI and Anthropic PBC in the burgeoning market.

At an annual conference in Las Vegas, Google's cloud computing unit on Wednesday showcased a set of tools that can create AI agents and track their work within companies, including a dedicated inbox for the virtual bots to post information and progress reports. Google also introduced updates across its Workspace productivity suite and offered up a vision in which AI agents dramatically overhaul the day to day routines of the average worker.

The company's researchers invented much of the technology that touched off the current AI boom, but now Google is in a tight race with leading AI agent makers to win business from corporate customers clamoring for the technology to boost productivity. With the company pouring as much as $185 billion into capital expenditure this year alone, investors are hoping that it can drum up enough new business to justify the steep investment in AI.

The search giant is hoping that its combination of chips, AI models and developer tools will give it an edge. It's poised to announce a new generation of custom-designed chips, including one dedicated to inference, or running AI models after they've been trained. With this push, Google will further challenge market leader Nvidia Corp. in a fast-growing category for semiconductors that's fueled by surging adoption of AI software.

"This isn't about offering individual services that can be cobbled together; it is about providing a comprehensive backbone for innovation," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said in a blog post.

A particular focus for Google is AI coding, a market where company leaders are growing increasingly worried that they have fallen behind. Many engineers in Silicon Valley toggle between Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex to see which program will give them the best results, but Google often isn't in the conversation, startup founders told Bloomberg News.

In a bid to court developers, Google said its Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform would include new features such as Memory Bank and Memory Profile to help agents to remember past interactions with users, a weakness of some early AI tools. Another new feature, Agent Simulation, will help developers more thoroughly test how the tools work before launch.

Anthropic has begun to turn its attention to workers in other sectors with its Cowork product, and Google is chasing that business too. Google said workers could use its Gemini Enterprise app, which it framed as the "front door for AI for every employee," to create agents without writing a line of code.

The company also announced Projects, a collaboration platform designed for workers to collaborate with their colleagues as well as agents. Google said the tool brings together information from sources such as Workspace, Microsoft Corp.'s OneDrive and company chats to help agents operate with the proper context. Other offerings by the company are intended to help clients make sure that agents can operate in fields with compliance issues.

Google also unveiled new cybersecurity agents that it said clients could use to protect their systems. AI models are identifying a torrent of bugs, but questions are mounting about how they could be exploited without proper safeguards.