What Is the Gemini Agent? Google's Work Agent Explained
The Gemini agent is Google’s new AI agent for work, announced on October 8, 2026 at Gemini at Work. You give it an objective instead of step-by-step instructions, it plans the work, uses your company’s apps and data, and keeps running in the cloud for hours or days until it’s done. It can also create “coworker agents” that get their own Google Workspace account, email address and calendar.
Google is bringing it to businesses first, through Gemini Enterprise, and to consumers later. It has published no price.
What the Gemini agent does
Google calls it “a single, universal agent for work.” In Thomas Kurian’s keynote, the pitch was one prompt box for everything: answering questions, research and knowledge work, images and media, and writing and running code. The phrase Google keeps repeating is “you give it objectives, not instructions.”
The pieces that make it an agent rather than a chat window:
- It keeps working when you leave. Jobs run in the cloud, and “work that takes hours or days keeps running after you close your laptop.”
- It starts on its own. “You can assign it work, schedule tasks that need to be completed, or have it respond to events.”
- It works inside Workspace. Gemini runs inline in Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Chat and Calendar. Workspace can also flag an email, like a manager asking for a slide deck, as something to hand straight to Gemini with one click.
- It reaches beyond Google. Google lists Microsoft 365 and Teams, Slack, Confluence, Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow, BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks, Postgres, Git, local desktop files “and any MCP server.”
- It runs on any device and channel: web, iOS, Android, Windows and Mac, plus the command line, Microsoft 365 and Slack.
- It picks the model. Gemini routes each job to a model, across Google’s own family and “Claude models from Anthropic today,” with an override if you want a specific one.
- It remembers. Google describes session, semantic, procedural and episodic memory, including “skills it writes for itself.”
Coworker agents: AI teammates with their own email address
The most unusual part of the launch is the coworker agent. You describe a role, and Gemini creates an agent for it. That agent “receives its own Workspace account, including an email address, calendar, Drive, and presence in your company directory,” at an address on an @agents subdomain of your company.
Colleagues work with it the way they’d work with a person: add it to a Chat space, @mention it, or tag it in a document comment, where it can suggest edits and shows up under its own name in version history. Google’s example is an events-coordinator agent drafting a launch-readiness document and posting it back to the team’s chat.
Two rules shape what it can touch. A coworker agent “acts under its own identity rather than yours,” and it “sees only what you share with it.” Gemini can also spin up temporary sub-agents, each with its own identity, for parallel parts of a long job.
Who can get the Gemini agent
Businesses first. Sundar Pichai said Google will bring the agent to companies before “later rolling it out to consumers,” to work through security, scale and performance first (TechCrunch). It’s sold through Gemini Enterprise, which Google says nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 already use.
Industry versions are in preview for financial services and legal, with government, healthcare and retail “coming soon.”
Consumers already have a separate agent, Gemini Spark, which works with personal Google accounts on Google AI Pro or Ultra.
How much the Gemini agent costs
Google hasn’t published a price. The launch post describes cost controls instead: a hard spending cap per project in the Cloud Billing Console, after which “that project’s agent pauses” until someone resumes it, and smart routing that sends simple jobs to cheaper models. Expect it to be quoted as part of a Gemini Enterprise deal.
What admins get
Every agent gets its own identity “governed like an employee, with least-privilege permissions.” Every action is written to an audit trail attributed to the agent, not to a person. Agents run inside a sandbox with its own network boundary, and an Agent Gateway enforces company policies in real time, such as “agents may not open documents classified Need to Know.”
What to weigh before you plan around it
- It’s an enterprise rollout. No public price, no self-serve sign-up for a small team, and features arriving through admins.
- Identity cuts both ways. A coworker agent with its own address is clean for audit trails. It also means its email comes from the agent’s address, not yours, which matters for anything client-facing.
- It’s a week old. The launch post lists capabilities, not limits. Concurrency, quotas and per-agent costs aren’t documented yet.
The Gemini agent vs Carly
If you’re a large Google Workspace company with an admin team, the Gemini agent is built for you. If you’re a person or a small team who wants an agent working in your inbox and calendar today, Carly is the faster path:
- It works across Google and Microsoft at once. Carly connects every Gmail and Outlook account and every calendar you have, and sends from the right one.
- It starts on real events. A new email, a meeting request, a form or a call fires your workflow immediately.
- It reaches thousands of apps, from HubSpot to QuickBooks (integrations).
- It has a price you can see. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month.
The full side-by-side is in Carly vs the Gemini agent, and the other options are in Gemini agent alternatives.
FAQ
What is the Gemini agent?
Google’s AI agent for work, announced October 8, 2026. You give it an objective, it plans and carries out the work across Workspace and other business apps, keeps running for hours or days, and can create coworker agents with their own email address and calendar.
Is the Gemini agent available now?
Google is rolling it out to businesses first through Gemini Enterprise, with consumers later. Industry versions for financial services and legal are in preview. Contact Google Cloud for your company’s access. For an agent you can set up yourself today, Carly is self-serve.
How much does the Gemini agent cost?
Google hasn’t published pricing. It’s sold through Gemini Enterprise, with per-project spending caps you set in the Cloud Billing Console.
What is a Gemini coworker agent?
An agent Gemini creates from a role you describe. It gets its own Workspace account, email address, calendar, Drive and directory entry, works under its own identity, and only sees what you share with it. Your team talks to it in Chat, by @mention or in document comments.
Is the Gemini agent the same as Gemini Spark?
No. Gemini Spark is Google’s always-on agent for personal Google accounts. The Gemini agent is the business version, sold through Gemini Enterprise with admin controls and coworker agents.
Does the Gemini agent work with Outlook and Microsoft 365?
Google says it runs in Microsoft 365, Teams and Slack as well as Workspace. Carly also works across Gmail and Outlook at once, with every account connected side by side.
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