Google Cloud Next Highlights Focus on GenAI

At its annual Google Cloud Next conference, the industry leader announced a number of updates coming to Google Cloud, with significant focus on evolutions that leverage GenAI technology.

Held in Las Vegas in mid-April, Google Next brought together 30,000 attendees to learn and discuss all things Google Cloud. This included several new core updates to Google Cloud’s capabilities, with a focus on GenAI. Updates and enhancements range from AI coding assistance to cybersecurity and data center infrastructure.

Google announced it will be adding significant capabilities to Vertex AI, which lets customers “discover, customize, augment, deploy, and manage gen AI models.” Major additions include the updated Gemini 1.5 Pro and a new version of Gemma, an open-source model designed to help customers with code generation and assistance.

With new Gemini and Gemma models available on Vertex AI, customers can combine these capabilities to process audio, video, text, code and more. For example, an insurance company would be able to generate incident reports combining video, images, and text.

Google has also invested in its infrastructure. Its AI Hypercomputer, a “supercomputing architecture” that includes performance-optimized hardware and machine learning frameworks, now offers four times more compute power than its previous generation.

Gemini for Google Workspace has expanded. In addition to supporting Docs, Sheets, and Slides, users can also access its AI capabilities across Gmail, Meet and Chat, and its new app Google Vids<, an AI-powered tool to help users create and edit videos.

Google Cloud is a key focus area for Google. In Q4 of last year, Google Cloud earned $36 billion in annual revenue, a growth of 500% compared to five years ago. Google is looking to maintain its position in the cloud industry by ensuring its platform is not only ready, but also at the forefront of the AI movement.

Google currently hosts more than 60% of funded GenAI startups and is looking to continue to be an attractive platform for the companies of the future.