At Google Cloud’s biggest event of the year, CEO Thomas Kurian took the stage in Las Vegas to showcase the company’s rapid progress in artificial intelligence—and laid out a bold vision for what comes next.
“Just one year ago, we stood here and talked about the future of AI for organizations,” Kurian told a packed audience at Google Cloud Next 25. “Today, that future is being built by all of us.”
AI for Everyone, Everywhere
Kurian highlighted Google Cloud’s record-breaking innovation pace, noting, “In 2024, we shipped more than 3,000 product advances across Google Cloud and Workspace.” AI adoption is accelerating across industries: more than 4 million developers now use Gemini, and Vertex AI usage increased 20-fold over the past year. Within Workspace alone, users are experiencing over 2 billion AI assists every month.
Even more exciting, he said, is the real-world impact: “We’ll be sharing over 500 customer stories showcasing real business innovation and impact from AI adoption.”
From retail to research, that impact is tangible. Energy provider AES cut audit time from 14 days to one hour. Wayfair is enriching product listings five times faster. Mattel is now analyzing customer sentiment in real time. Kurian emphasized that the value of AI isn’t just in the technology—it’s in the business results it delivers.
“Google is building for a unique moment,” he said. “We’re investing in the technology and the ecosystem to power your growth and transformation.”
Powering the AI Future
To support this momentum, Google unveiled the Ironwood TPU, its most advanced AI chip yet. “Ironwood achieves 3,600 times better performance than our first publicly available TPU,” Kurian said. “It’s the most powerful chip we have ever built and will enable the next frontier of AI.”
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, added, “Our infrastructure needs to move at Google speed, with near-zero latency… That’s why we’re investing around $75 billion in 2025 into servers and data centers to power our AI compute and cloud business.”
Google Cloud now spans 42 regions globally and continues expanding. Pichai announced a major upgrade: “We are making Google’s global private network available to enterprises around the world. We call it Cloud WAN.” He said the network offers over 40% faster performance while reducing total cost of ownership by up to 40%.
Smarter Tools and AI Agents
Kurian also emphasized Google Cloud’s efforts to enable smarter collaboration between AI systems. He introduced Agentspace, a platform for building and deploying AI “agents” that can handle tasks, automate workflows, and assist employees.
“AI agents are poised to play an increasingly vital role in the workforce,” he said. “With tools like Agentspace, employees can interact with and build agents—even without writing code.”
At the same time, Google Workspace is evolving rapidly. New features like “Help Me Analyze” in Sheets and audio summaries in Docs are just the beginning. Kurian said AI is “fundamentally reshaping how work gets done,” with familiar tools like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets becoming more intelligent and context-aware.
Pichai noted that Gemini is being deployed at scale: “With all 15 of our products serving half a billion users—7 of which have over 2 billion users—we’re deploying Gemini at global scale.”
The Road Ahead
Pichai closed the keynote with a bold statement: “The opportunity with AI is as big as it gets… With Google Cloud, we see AI as the most important way we can help advance your mission.”
Kurian echoed that optimism: “We’re here to help every customer take part in the future. The opportunity presented by AI is unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed.”
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