Thomas Kurian

Stories

Google Cloud pitches itself as the operating system for enterprise AI agents

Launched the Gemini agent at the Gemini at Work event on October 8, 2026

Google donated three agent-infrastructure projects to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation on November 5: Agent Substrate, gVisor and OpenRL. Agent Substrate, which snapshots idle agents to storage and restores them in under 500 milliseconds, reached version 1.0 and is generally available on Google Kubernetes Engine.

Updated 6 days ago

OpenAI models arrive on Google Cloud

New Capabilities

Overseeing Google Cloud's multi-model strategy

OpenAI's GPT-6 models and its Codex coding agent are moving into Google Cloud's Model Garden. The three models, Astra, Sol and Luna, are in private preview for select enterprise customers, and the companies say general availability is weeks away.

Updated Oct 22

Google completes record acquisition of cloud security firm Wiz

Money Moves

As of May 2026: Integrating Wiz into Google Cloud's product portfolio

Wiz was founded in January 2020 by four veterans of Israel's military intelligence Unit 8200. Six years later, Google paid $32 billion in cash — the largest deal in Google's history, the largest cybersecurity acquisition ever, and more than the combined cost of its eight next-biggest purchases.

Updated May 30

AI data centers are rebuilding – and stress-testing – the U.S. power grid

Built World

As of May 2026: Orchestrating hyperscale AI infrastructure growth dependent on new clean and firm power

Since late 2022, U.S. regulators and utilities have warned that AI-optimized data centers could reshape national power demand, ending an era of flat electricity consumption and forcing rapid buildout of generation and transmission. By early 2026, those warnings have crystallized into concrete challenges. PJM Interconnection's December 2025 capacity auction hit the $333.44/MW-day price cap and failed to meet reliability requirements for the first time in its history. Data centers accounted for $6.5 billion—or 40%—of the auction's $16.4 billion in costs.

Updated May 10

Notable Quotes

We are focused on giving customers a broad selection of models, including those from OpenAI, so they can choose the right model for any given job, helping to deliver optimal quality and lower costs.

from OpenAI models arrive on Google Cloud · Updated Oct 22

"We want to make security a catalyst for innovation, not a barrier. With this acquisition, we will deliver a unified security platform that simplifies the complex task of protecting multicloud environments in the AI era." — March 2025

from Google completes record acquisition of cloud security firm Wiz · Updated May 30

Kurian said the NextEra partnership “will help us meet increasing demand from our customers as they deploy AI technologies at scale.”

from AI data centers are rebuilding – and stress-testing – the U.S. power grid · Updated May 10