Google ramps up its ‘AI in the workplace’ ambitions with Gemini Enterprise

Google on Thursday launched a comprehensive AI platform for businesses called Gemini Enterprise, the Alphabet-owned company’s latest attempt to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI in the fast-growing market for workplace AI tools.

As part of the launch, Google announced several new Gemini Enterprise customers, including software design firm Figma; the buy-now-pay-later company Klarna; the foodservice distributor Gordon Foods; Australian retail bank Macquarie Bank; and Virgin Voyages, a cruise line that has deployed more than 50 specialized AI agents that can perform tasks autonomously on Gemini Enterprise.

Gemini Enterprise builds on the company’s previous efforts to bring AI capabilities to businesses. But Google says this shouldn’t be mistaken as a mere rebranding, despite the ever-changing and sometimes overlapping nomenclature used by the Google Workspace corporate brand. For example, Google Workspace adopted the Gemini brand name in February 2024 and announced additional generative AI products called Gemini Enterprise that were available to businesses. Google discontinued the Workspace Gemini Enterprise add-on earlier this year after it started including AI features in its Workspace Business and Enterprise plans.

The Gemini Enterprise launched Thursday is not a Workspace add-on product; it is a separate and secure platform under Google Cloud that functions as an AI agent toolkit – essentially a set of tools that allow companies to build and deploy their own AI assistants. Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, described it in a blog post as “the new front door for AI in the workplace.”

Gemini Enterprise is designed to let companies securely create, share, and use AI agents for a variety of workplace tasks across sales, marketing, engineering, human resources, and finance. Google also said that for the first time, these AI agents will be able to access, combine and analyze information from internal systems and Google AI tools such as Code Assist and Deep Research within a single business workflow.

All of this work is accomplished through a Gemini Enterprise chatbot that connects to an employee’s data, including Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, as well as business applications such as Salesforce and SAP. The platform includes Google’s Gemini AI models among other products, such as a collection of pre-built Google agents for deep research and data insights, a no-code product that allows employees to analyze information and automate internal processes, and a central governance framework that allows users to visualize, secure, and control all their agents from one place.

This new ‘front door for AI in the workplace’ does come at a price. The company said the annual Gemini Enterprise standard and “plus” editions start at $30 per seat per month. A cheaper Gemini Business annual subscription, intended for small businesses, startups or individual departments within a larger company, costs $21 per seat per month. Google said the business edition will launch Thursday and include a 30-day free trial for all customers.

Gemini Enterprise reflects Google’s latest efforts to capture a larger share of the enterprise market, which is becoming increasingly crowded as generative AI becomes a more important tool in the workplace. Booming AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI have enterprise products and both have landed high-profile customers.

OpenAI says on its website that it has 5 million business users of the ChatGPT Enterprise product it launched in 2023. This month, Deloitte announced plans to roll out Anthropic’s chatbot Claude to its nearly 500,000 global employees.