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Google\u2019s rapid AI improvements\u00a0have lifted its once-beleaguered cloud division, with startups and enterprises now clamoring to build on top of the newly competitive Gemini. And this week, the company is set for its next big moment, as it brings together its stakeholders at the fast-growing Google Cloud Next event in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Though Google Cloud Platform still\u00a0trails\u00a0its rivals in terms of market share, the business is growing fast, with Q4 cloud revenue increasing 48% to $17.7 billion. Meanwhile, Google\u2019s cloud revenue backlog more than doubled in 2025, growing to $240 billion by the end of last year. Google\u2019s also said AI customers on average use 1.8x as many Google products as non-AI customers.<\/p>\n
Cloud Next, which has long outgrown San Francisco\u2019s Moscone Center, will be a moment for the company to mark its progress in the cloud wars, a competition where it was once left for dead.<\/p>\n
Given the AI race\u2019s speed, it won\u2019t be safe for Google to take a breath, though. With the rise of Claude Code and OpenAI\u2019s Codex, the company\u2019s now under pressure to bolster its own agentic coding play. Google\u2019s\u00a0reportedly\u00a0created a \u201cstrike team\u201d to improve its AI coding models. And in the meantime, it will focus on helping its customers build agents of their own, a focus of its Vegas event.<\/p>\n
Unlike some of the more messianic-style messaging you\u2019d hear from Google\u2019s competitors, the company is taking a more grounded approach this year. Bottlenecks, for instance, will be a key theme at Cloud Next, with more than a dozen sessions citing the topic. One session, \u201cThe human bottleneck: Why great tech fails and how to drive value in AI,\u201d features World Labs co-founder Fei-Fei Li.<\/p>\n
The bottleneck theme is pertinent given the \u2018capability overhang\u2019 that so many AI labs talk about. By this, they essentially mean that AI\u2019s abilities have outpaced humans\u2019 capability to implement them. If Google is betting that further growth will come from helping customers solve these problems, the payoff could be further gains against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft\u2019s Azure.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a sample of this year\u2019s Cloud Next talks:<\/p>\n
The Intelligence Report<\/p>\n
The National Security Agency is\u00a0reportedly\u00a0using Anthropic\u2019s new Mythos model despite the government blacklist.<\/p>\n
Google added new AI\u00a0features\u00a0for Chrome, including new search tools and \u201cskills\u201d powered by Gemini.<\/p>\n
Meta is\u00a0expected\u00a0to lay off around 10% of staff next month. Meanwhile, it\u2019s also reportedly\u00a0building\u00a0an AI clone of Mark Zuckerberg to attend meetings and talk with staff.<\/p>\n
OpenAI had several major\u00a0departures, including Kevin Weil (former chief product officer), Srinivas Narayanan (CTO of B2B Applications) and\u00a0Bill Peebles\u00a0(head of Sora).<\/p>\n
Publisher\u00a0efforts\u00a0to block AI scraping are creating serious worries for the Internet Archive, which operates the Wayback Machine.<\/p>\n
Amazon\u00a0debuted\u00a0a new agentic AI tool for drug discovery via AWS.<\/p>\n
Microsoft is reportedly\u00a0testing\u00a0a new always-on agent for Copilot similar to OpenClaw.<\/p>\n
A humanoid robot\u00a0won\u00a0a half marathon race in Beijing, beating the human race record by several minutes. (It was one of 300 robots that competed in Sunday\u2019s race.)<\/p>\n
Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering at the Pentagon,\u00a0joined the Big Technology podcast\u00a0to talk about how AI is shaping modern warfare, his decision to label Anthropic as a supply chain risk, and what he thinks about the Pentagon Pizza Index.<\/p>\n
Super Apps Vision Come Into Focus<\/p>\n
Last week, OpenAI\u00a0debuted\u00a0a new Codex super app for desktops, with coding tools and other features for computer control and an in-app browser. The updates for Codex also include more than 90 extra plugins that combine skills, app integrations and MCP servers. OpenAI also released a new reasoning model called\u00a0GPT-Rosalind\u00a0to support life sciences research including biology, drug discovery and translational medicine.<\/p>\n
Other AI model updates announced:<\/p>\n
Anthropic\u00a0released\u00a0a new AI tool called Claude Design that lets users create prototypes from text prompts. It\u2019s powered by\u00a0Claude Opus 4.7, which was also released last week.<\/p>\n
Perplexity released a new\u00a0\u201cPersonal Computer\u201d\u00a0AI assistant for Mac users, with multi-model orchestration through new computer agents for\u00a0working\u00a0with files, apps, websites and other connectors.<\/p>\n
Google debuted a new\u00a0Gemini desktop app for macOS, featuring a way to analyze content in any shared window. Google also\u00a0released\u00a0a new Gemini desktop app for Windows desktops.<\/p>\n
7 Stats From Stanford\u2019s 2026 AI Index<\/p>\n
Stanford\u2019s 2026 AI Index provides yet another annual deep-dive into AI\u2019s technical progress, economic influence and societal impact. With more than 400 pages, the\u00a0annual report\u00a0from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI features far more than we can fit into this section. But here are a few quick stats and other insights that stood out.<\/p>\n
AI is getting better at\u00a0performing in professional domains\u00a0like tax evaluations, mortgage processing, corporate finance and legal reasoning. (Accuracy for the top 15 models ranged between 60% and 90%.)<\/p>\n
The performance gap between U.S. and Chinese AI models is closer than ever, with the top U.S. models now only ahead by 2.7%<\/p>\n
Video models like DeepMind Veo 3 are getting\u00a0better\u00a0at generating content with realistic object behaviors without being trained on them. Two examples: simulating buoyancy and solving mazes.<\/p>\n
The number of AI researchers moving to the U.S. has slowed drastically,\u00a0falling\u00a0by 80% in just the last year.<\/p>\n
The number of AI safety incidents jumped to 362 in 2025, up from 233 in 2024.<\/p>\n
Open-source AI projects continue scaling, with 5.6 million projects on GitHub and Hugging Face uploading tripling in three years.<\/p>\n
This post originally appeared on Big Technology, which hosts a newsletter and podcast.<\/p>\n
#Google #Clouds #big #momentand #continue #ascent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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