Google's Gemini agent gets its own work email and can run jobs for days across Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Slack

Google Cloud announced on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, at its Gemini at Work event that it is launching the Gemini agent — a single enterprise agent that can take objectives, plan the work, connect to business systems, and bring back finished output inside the tools people already use. Coworker-mode agents get their own @agents.company.com email, calendar, Drive and directory presence, and Google says the agent can keep running for hours or days after you close your laptop. The Verge reports it is currently available to enterprise customers in private preview.

Chatbots were the demo. The race this fall is who gets to be the coworker that keeps working after you close the laptop — Microsoft's Copilot Autopilot, OpenAI's Dots, Anthropic inside Docs, and now Google handing Gemini its own company email. That sounds like a punchline until you remember audit logs, spend caps and least-privilege identity are the boring parts that decide whether a bank will actually turn it on. Google is also doing the un-Google thing of letting Claude run jobs inside its agent shell, which is a quiet admission that enterprises care more about the harness than the logo on the model. Financial Services and Legal getting first-class previews is the tell: the money is in regulated workflows, not another consumer chat skin. The fair caveat: private preview is not "your company has it Monday," Google's customer stats mostly describe Gemini Enterprise already in the building, and a confident agent with its own calendar can still be confidently wrong at scale. Still, if the coworker email works, the inbox just got a new kind of colleague — one that never sleeps and never forgets the project brief.

On Thursday, 8 October 2026, at Gemini at Work 2026, Google Cloud chief executive Thomas Kurian announced the Gemini agent. Google calls it a single, universal agent for work: knowledge work, questions and answers, content creation, and coding, from one prompt box and one API. Those lines are Google’s, from Kurian’s Cloud Blog keynote write-up and from The Keyword, Google’s company blog.

What it is supposed to do. Google says the agent plans the work, uses skills and tools, connects to a company’s business systems, and brings back finished work inside the documents, inboxes, and developer environments people already use. Users give it objectives — the outcome they want — not only step-by-step instructions. Those lines are Google’s. Thomas Kurian, as TechCrunch reports him, said the same: “objectives, not just instructions.”

Where you can reach it. Google says the agent is available on the web, on iOS and Android phones, on Windows and Mac desktops, from a command-line tool, inside Google Workspace, inside Microsoft 365, and inside Slack. It can also run headless in third-party apps, meaning it does the work without opening its own window. Those lines are Google’s.

It runs in Google’s cloud, so it keeps one set of memory and context across devices. Google says jobs that take hours or days keep running after you close your laptop, and the work is still there when you come back. Those lines are Google’s.

It can spin up temporary sub-agents — smaller helper agents, each with its own identity — to split a long job into pieces. It can also act as a coworker agent: a longer-lived teammate with a defined role. Coworker agents get their own @agents.company.com email addresses, their own stored files, and access only to the shared context a person or team gives them. Those lines are Google’s. The Verge also reports the @agents.company.com address.

The agent and the model underneath it are separate choices. Google says the agent can pick a model from the Gemini family or from Anthropic’s Claude models today, and that other private and open models are planned. Users can override the pick. Early testers named by TechCrunch are On, the sportswear brand, plus Shopify and PayPal. Those lines are Google’s and TechCrunch’s.

The tools Google lists include Confluence, Microsoft Office and Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, Git, Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow, BigQuery, Databricks, Postgres, Snowflake, files on a person’s desktop, and MCP servers. MCP, Model Context Protocol, is a common plug for connecting an agent to other software. Those names are Google’s.

Google says the agent keeps four kinds of memory: session memory for the job in front of it, even when that job runs for days; semantic memory, a structured knowledge base it builds as it reads and talks; procedural memory for how a job gets done; and episodic memory of work it has already finished. Those lines are Google’s.

Inside Google Workspace, Google describes three modes. Personal assistance: it already knows your calendar, your team, and your files. Proactive delegation: it can suggest a job you can hand off, such as turning a manager’s email into a slide deck. Coworker mode: the agent gets its own Workspace account and acts under its own identity, and the audit trail — the log of what it did — is attributed to the agent, not to a person. Those lines are Google’s.

Industry versions are in preview for Financial Services and for Legal. Financial Services draws on FactSet, LSEG, S&P Global, SEC filings, and a company’s own files; Google says it ships with more than 50 skills and names CME Group and Deutsche Bank as users. Legal inherits matter-level permissions from document systems such as NetDocuments and iManage; Google names Harvey and Onit as partners, and says the law firm Cooley is building a redaction agent. Government, Healthcare, and Retail are listed as coming soon. Those lines are Google’s.

On governance, Google says each agent gets a cryptographically attested identity with least-privilege permissions — access only to what it needs — and that connections to outside systems use OAuth, a standard sign-in handoff. Every action is written to an audit trail. Agents run inside an Agent Sandbox, and traffic passes through Agent Gateway, which Google calls an AI network firewall. Those lines are Google’s.

On cost, Google lists multi-model orchestration, Smart Routing that sends each job to a cheaper or stronger model as needed, and real-time spend caps in Cloud Billing that can pause a project’s agent when a limit is hit. Those lines are Google’s. VentureBeat notes that Google did not print a separate price for the new agent, or a date when it would be generally available to every customer.

Google’s customer numbers on the page mostly describe Gemini Enterprise, the product already in buildings, not proof that the new agent is live everywhere. Google says nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise; nearly 80% of Google Cloud customers use its AI products; and nearly 500 customers each processed more than one trillion tokens in the prior year. A token is a small chunk of text a model reads or writes. Examples on the same page: BNP Paribas putting Gemini Enterprise in front of more than 65,000 employees; Bradesco cutting document review from 1 hour to 5 minutes; Orange Spain deploying more than 1,000 agents; SOMPO building more than 10,000 agents. Those figures are Google’s.

Who can use the new agent today. The Verge reports it is currently available to enterprise customers in private preview. TechCrunch says Google is starting with businesses and will bring the agent to consumers later. Those lines are The Verge’s and TechCrunch’s. They are not a public launch date for every company.

The picture is Google Cloud’s official Gemini at Work ’26 release graphic: the word Gemini on a rainbow-tipped pill, and atWork pointing to ’26 on a blue one. It is the company’s launch image. The frame does not print a calendar date.

In plain terms, Google Cloud said on Thursday that it is launching one enterprise Gemini agent that can take an objective, plan the work, and keep running for hours or days after the laptop closes. Coworker-mode agents get their own company email. The agent can pick Gemini or Claude for a job. Financial Services and Legal versions are in preview. The Verge says enterprise customers can use it in private preview now. Google did not print a separate price or a general-availability date. The big customer counts on the page are mostly about Gemini Enterprise already in use.