Google unveils a Gemini agent that works across Microsoft 365 and Slack
Coworker agents get their own @agents.company.com email addresses and storage, and Gemini enforces a hard limit on each project’s AI spend set in Google’s billing console
- Google says per-token AI prices have fallen 98% since 2024
- Spend is tracked per project, so AI costs can be charged back to departments
- The financial services version draws on FactSet, LSEG and S&P Global data, and CME Group and Deutsche Bank already use it
- The legal version inherits matter-level permissions and ethical walls from NetDocuments and iManage
The choice of AI agent no longer has to follow the choice of email and document suite. Google says each agent’s identity is governed like an employee’s, with least-privilege permissions, which brings agents inside the access controls firms already apply to staff.
“You give it objectives, not instructions. You delegate an outcome and come back to finished work.”Thomas Kurian, chief executive, Google Cloud
Google Cloud has announced the Gemini agent, a single AI agent for work that answers questions, carries out objectives it is assigned and writes and runs code. Thomas Kurian, chief executive of Google Cloud, set it out in a blog post on 8 October, adapted from his keynote at Gemini at Work 2026.
The agent can be reached from the web, iOS and Android phones, Windows and Mac desktops, the command line, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Slack. It runs in the cloud, so work that takes hours or days carries on after a laptop is closed. It picks a model for each job from Google’s Gemini family and other companies’ models, and a routing tool sends each workload to the model Google says gives the best performance at the lowest cost. Google says nearly 80% of its cloud customers already use its AI products.
Longer-lived coworker agents hold a defined role across days and tasks. They have dedicated identities and see only the context staff give them. Every action Gemini takes is written to an audit trail under the agent’s name rather than a person’s. Versions built for financial services and legal work are in preview.
Two banks and a university are among the customers Kurian named. Lloyds Banking Group has onboarded nearly 1,000 engineers to Envoy, its Gemini-powered pipeline for building agents. Starling built a Scam Intelligence tool on Gemini Enterprise, Google’s existing AI product for business, which Google says has quadrupled the rate at which customers cancel potentially fraudulent payments. Arden University, an online and blended learning provider, is giving more than 30,000 students and staff access to Gemini Enterprise.
Google will offer the agent to businesses before consumers, TechCrunch reported. Kurian’s post gives no price or general availability date.
Sources
- Google Cloud, “Welcome to Gemini at Work 2026: Introducing the Gemini agent”, blog post by Thomas Kurian, 8 October 2026. https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/welcome-to-gemini-at-work-2026
- TechCrunch, “Google brings agentic AI to Gemini, starting with businesses”, Sarah Perez, 8 October 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/08/google-brings-agentic-ai-to-gemini-starting-with-businesses/
