Google Cloud Unveils New AI Models and Software for Developing and Managing AI Agents
Google Cloud is gearing up for the agentic AI era in a big way, and its showing off its new wares this week at its Next conference. The company unveiled a slew of new AI models and new software for developing and managing AI agents, as well as the seventh generation of the processor at the heart of its AI Hypercomputer, a TPU dubbed Ironwood, which Google says is twice as power efficient as the previous generation.
Ironwood TPU
The seventh-gen Ironwood TPU was built from the ground up for inferencing at scale, according to Amin Vahdat, the company’s vice president of ML, systems and cloud AI. And oh my, what scale. "Ironwood will scale to over 9,000 chips per pod to meet the exponentially growing demands of thinking models like Gemini 2.5," Vahdat said during a press conference on Monday. "This scale will deliver a staggering 42.5 exaflops of compute per pod."
For perspective, the world’s number one supercomputer, El Capitan, supports 1.7 Exaflops per pod, Vahdat said. By comparison, Ironwood running on Google Cloud’s TPU-based AI Hypercomputer will deliver more than 24 times the compute power of El Capitan, he pointed out.
Other Improvements
Google Cloud has made a few other improvements to its service to help customers put all that power to use. For instance, its making its internal advanced networking technology, dubbed Google Cloud WAN, available to customers for the first time. "Our customers can now tap into the same planet-scale network that powers Google’s globally available services, including Gmail, YouTube, and search," Vahdat said. "No other technology company can offer this to its customers."
The company is also making its internal machine learning runtime, dubbed Next Pathways, available to customers. "Developed by Google DeepMind, Pathways on Google Cloud allows customers to scale out model serving to hundreds of TPUs with exceptional performance," Vahdat said.
Agent Development Kit (ADK)
Google Cloud is also rolling out a new Agent Development Kit (ADK), which it bills as a "unified development environment" that "makes it easy to build, test and operate these agents," Vahdat said. "With ADK, customers can easily build a multi-agent system in under 100 lines of code and precisely steer agent behavior with creative reasoning and strict guardrails," the Google VP said.
Agent Garden
Since growing new crops of AI agents will be so important, why not have a garden devoted to it? That’s essentially what Google Cloud is enabling with its aptly named Agent Garden, which Vahdat called a collection of ready-to-use samples and tools directly accessible in SDK. The Agent Garden will make it easy for users to connect agents to 100+ pre-built connectors, as well as to custom APIs, other integration workflows, or data stored in customers’ cloud systems. It will also support Model Context Protocol (MCP), the new protocol developed by Anthropic to connect data with models.
Conclusion
Google Cloud is positioning itself as a leader in the agentic AI era, with a slew of new AI models, software, and hardware designed to make it easier for customers to develop and manage their own AI agents. With Ironwood, Next Pathways, ADK, and Agent Garden, Google Cloud is offering a comprehensive suite of tools and services to help customers take advantage of the growing demand for AI workloads.
FAQs
Q: What is Ironwood TPU?
A: Ironwood TPU is the seventh generation of the processor at the heart of Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer, a TPU dubbed Ironwood, which is twice as power efficient as the previous generation.
Q: What is Agent Development Kit (ADK)?
A: ADK is a "unified development environment" that "makes it easy to build, test and operate these agents," allowing customers to easily build a multi-agent system in under 100 lines of code and precisely steer agent behavior with creative reasoning and strict guardrails.
Q: What is Agent Garden?
A: Agent Garden is a collection of ready-to-use samples and tools directly accessible in SDK, allowing users to connect agents to 100+ pre-built connectors, as well as to custom APIs, other integration workflows, or data stored in customers’ cloud systems.
