Google Cloud Next 2026: Top 7 Enterprise AI Announcements Recap

The Week Google Decided To Compete For The Agent Stack

Google Cloud Next 2026 was less a product launch and more a positioning announcement. The headline message: Google is no longer selling Vertex AI as a managed model platform. It is selling Gemini Enterprise as an agent platform — and the seven announcements below are the supporting cast.

For voice and chat agent builders like us at CallSphere, four of these matter directly: Agentspace becoming part of the core platform, partner agents shipping with first-party connectors, A2A going to the Linux Foundation, and a 2M context Gemini model that finally makes long-call transcripts cheap to reason over.

1. Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (Vertex AI Rebrand)

Vertex AI is now Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. The name change is the smaller story. The bigger one is that the SKU now ships with agent runtime, eval harness, and managed tool calling on by default — features that previously required Agent Builder plus a stack of third-party glue.

Pricing follows the new pattern across the industry: per-agent-hour and per-tool-call metering, with model token costs separate. For shops already on Vertex, the migration is mostly cosmetic; for shops evaluating it, the value prop is now "buy the platform, get the agents" rather than "buy the platform, build the agents."

2. Agentspace Absorbed Into Gemini Enterprise

Agentspace, Google's enterprise search and assistant product, is no longer a standalone SKU. It is now the default front door inside Gemini Enterprise — search across Drive, Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, Jira, and any connected partner system, with agent actions on top.

For knowledge-worker workflows this is huge. It is also a clear shot across the bow at ChatGPT Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot Business Chat, both of which charge separately for the connector layer.

3. Workspace Studio: The Agent Builder For Non-Engineers

Workspace Studio is a no-code agent builder targeted at line-of-business users — think Sales Ops building a quota agent, HR building an onboarding bot — without needing Vertex SDK skills. It ships with a library of starter templates, a drag-and-drop tool selector, and a publish-to-Workspace flow that drops the agent into Gmail, Docs, and Chat.

This is the Workspace version of what Microsoft did with Copilot Studio in 2024. The big difference: Workspace Studio's tool layer is MCP- and A2A-aware out of the gate.

4. Partner Agents With First-Party Connectors

Six partners shipped first-party agents on day one: Box, Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Dun and Bradstreet, and S&P Global. Each is a fully Google-vetted agent with deep connector access, billing rolled through GCP, and controls inherited from the parent platform.

The big enterprise unlock here is procurement. A buyer can now add a Workday agent to Gemini Enterprise without a separate Workday SaaS contract for AI access — the entitlement flows through Google.

5. A2A Donated To The Linux Foundation

A2A — Agent-to-Agent — is the open protocol Google originated in 2025 for cross-vendor agent coordination. At Next 2026 Google donated the spec to the Linux Foundation, putting it in the same governance bucket as Kubernetes, Envoy, and OpenTelemetry.

This matters because A2A is where multi-agent systems get interoperable. Where MCP is agent-to-tool, A2A is agent-to-agent across vendors and organizations. Donation to a neutral foundation removes the "Google owns it" objection that was slowing adoption at large enterprises.

6. Gemini 3.1 Ultra: 2M Context, Multimodal

Gemini 3.1 Ultra is the new top-of-the-line model — 2 million token context, multimodal (text, image, audio, video), with substantially better tool use scores than 3.0 Pro. The price point is in line with Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.1 reasoning tiers.

For voice agent platforms, the 2M context window is the standout. A full month of customer call transcripts plus the entire CRM record plus the product knowledge base now fits in a single prompt. That changes how retrieval, summarization, and quality assurance pipelines get designed.

7. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite: The Cheap Tier

Flash-Lite is the new bottom-of-the-stack. Sub-cent-per-1k-token pricing, lower latency, smaller context window — purpose-built for the call routing, intent classification, and lightweight tool-selection jobs that dominate production agent traffic. Most voice agent platforms route 70 to 90 percent of their volume through models in this tier; Flash-Lite slots in alongside GPT-4.1-mini and Claude Haiku 4.5.

What This Means For Voice And Chat Agent Builders

For CallSphere customers and AI agent builders generally, the takeaways are:

• A2A is now safe to build on. Linux Foundation governance removes the lock-in objection. A voice agent platform can confidently expose an Agent Card and accept inbound A2A coordination from a Workday or Salesforce agent.
• 2M context changes long-call workflows. Multi-hour healthcare intake, multi-call sales sequences, and full-history account reviews are now in-context, not retrieval-based.
• Workspace Studio raises the bar on no-code. Voice agent platforms still need to compete on phone-channel depth, but the conversational tier of agent building is commoditizing fast.

At CallSphere we run an AI voice and chat agent platform across voice, chat, SMS, and WhatsApp, with 57+ languages, 6 verticals (healthcare, real estate, sales, salon, IT helpdesk, after-hours), about 14 function tools, and 20+ database tables. Plans start at $19/month with a free trial, and a typical launch takes 3–5 days. The Next 2026 announcements push us further toward exposing an Agent Card and accepting A2A handoffs from upstream coordinators — see the CallSphere multi-agent post in this batch for the full picture.

See how CallSphere fits a multi-agent stack — book a demo.

FAQ

Q: Is Vertex AI going away? No. Vertex AI is the previous brand. The platform is now called Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. Existing Vertex SKUs, APIs, and deployments continue to work; the rename came with new agent-runtime features bundled in.

Q: Do I need to migrate from Agentspace to Gemini Enterprise? Agentspace continues to function as a feature inside Gemini Enterprise. Standalone Agentspace SKUs are being rolled into the broader platform contract; Google account teams are managing the transition.

Q: When is A2A 1.0 final under the Linux Foundation? Google announced the donation at Next 2026. LF working group formation, governance bootstrapping, and a 1.0 freeze are expected over the next two quarters, with adopters tracking the spec on GitHub in the interim.

Sources

• Google Cloud Next 2026 keynote — https://cloud.withgoogle.com/next
• A2A protocol on GitHub — https://github.com/a2aproject
• Gemini 3.1 model card — https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models