With companies of all sizes and across all industries increasingly embracing AI, the technology is rapidly moving from its experimentation phase to showing tangible results.
However achieving such results will rely on having the right partner - especially when it comes to cloud services, where Google Cloud is locked in a titanic battle with its hyperscaler rivals to show its supremacy.
I spoke to Maureen Costello, Vice President UK, Ireland, Sub-Saharan Africa, Google Cloud, to find out more about what the company’s AI tools can do for its customers - and how the UK in particular is leading the way in innovation.
The agentic enterprise is here
“If we were to think about 12 months ago, we were talking about experimentation and PoCs going on, and were they starting to scale - the conversation now will be all about agents and the agentic enterprise,” Costello tells me shortly before going on stage at Google Cloud Summit London 2026 to deliver the opening keynote.
“We're really seeing that shift from using AI to carry out single tasks to actually seeing complex, multi-step processes carried out autonomously by agents - and that's a real shift.”
The company showed off this shift with a number of expanded and new partnerships at its event, including an upgraded relationship with HSBC, which is adopting Google Cloud AI tools and platforms for over 200 use cases across its global services, and the UK government, which will work with Google Deepmind on a new AI-powered tool which should help reduce the time it takes for councils to process householder planning applications.
“Across industries, we're really seeing the ROI starting to come...when you look at where we're working together (with customers) it is in core processes,” Costello notes.
“From a personal point of view, I get excited by seeing the position of the UK globally and within Europe in terms of AI…we’re not just building AI - we are really building and leading the way.”
Costello mentions the “amazing” levels of research going on in the UK, including at Google’s new Platform 37 office in Kings Cross, which features “The Model Garden” a learning space for the latest AI technologies which the company describes as, “a physical marketplace for our best ideas”.
She notes that Google is also working with the UK government to offer upskilling to around 100,000 public servants on AI topics, and is also providing guidance to SMBs looking to take their first steps on their AI journey.
“AI has the opportunity to give a 20% productivity boost to small businesses,” she says, “if you think about that, that’s giving you a day back in a week, to actually do the tasks you need to do.”
Costello mentions Google’s view that AI will look to enhance jobs in terms of how we all use the technology, and highlights how the company is, “working as closely as we can with all sectors of enterprise” to ensure responsible usage.
“The more of those kinds of applications for AI we can show - there's financial ROI, but seeing those benefits land faster and quicker also helps,” she notes, “the more we look at how we can change those types of jobs, the way we can show tangible benefits...that to me is when you can really see the benefits”.
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