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 latest effort by the Alphabet-owned company 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 the 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 autonomously perform tasks on Gemini Enterprise.

Gemini Enterprise builds on previous iterations of the company’s 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 its enterprise brand Google Workspace. For instance, Google Workspace adopted the Gemini branding in February 2024 and announced add-on generative AI products called Gemini Enterprise that were available to businesses. Google discontinued that Workspace Gemini Enterprise add-on earlier this year after it began including AI features in its Workspace Business and Enterprise plans.

The Gemini Enterprise that launched Thursday isn’t a Workspace add-on product; it’s a separate and secure platform under Google Cloud that that functions as an AI agent toolkit — essentially a suite of tools that lets companies build and deploy their own AI assistants. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian described it in a blog post as “the new front door for AI in the workplace.”

Gemini Enterprise is designed to let businesses securely create, share, and use AI agents for a variety of workplace tasks in sales, marketing, engineering, human resources, and finance. Google also said that, for the first time, these AI agents can access, combine, and analyze information from internal systems and Google AI tools like Code Assist and Deep Research within a single enterprise workflow.

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

This new “front door for AI in the workplace” does have a price. The company said its annual Gemini Enterprise standard and “plus” editions start at $30 per seat per month. A cheaper Gemini Business annual plan, which is meant for small businesses, startups, or individual departments within a larger company, cost $21 per seat per month. Google said the business edition will launch Thursday and includes a 30-day free trial period for all customers.

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

OpenAI says on its website 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.