Google Cloud's Will Grannis on Google's Mission to Scale Innovation and Human-Centric AI | Cloud Wars Live

At Google Cloud Next 2025, Google Cloud VP and CTO Will Grannis
joins Bob Evans to explore how AI is reshaping enterprise
technology. Grannis shares how Google Cloud’s OCTO team works
with customers on complex challenges, using DeepMind research,
next-gen TPUs, and AI-native infrastructure, while noting the
fading line between B2B and B2C and the cultural changes needed
to adapt.


Inside Google Cloud’s AI Strategy


 



Google Cloud Is AI-Native at Its Core: Grannis
says that Google Cloud’s approach to AI is foundational. The
organization’s mindset, shaped by Google’s long-standing
leadership in AI, infuses every layer of its stack, from
infrastructure to user interfaces. With a legacy of deploying
machine learning at scale for over a decade, Google Cloud
doesn’t just offer AI tools—it helps customers reimagine their
businesses through AI-native thinking, using products like
DeepMind and innovations born across Google’s consumer
ecosystem.


The OCTO Team Solves the Hardest Problems with
Customers: Grannis leads the Office of the CTO (OCTO),
a team he jokingly calls “the nerdy Navy SEALs.” They tackle
highly complex, unsolved customer challenges that can’t be
addressed by existing products. Rather than building solutions
in isolation, they co-create alongside customers. They start
with business outcomes and design backward.


Multi-Modality and Multi-Agent Systems Are the
Future: Looking ahead, Grannis predicts that
multi-modal AI, i.e. models that process images, text, speech,
and even scent, will become the standard. He also foresees a
shift from single-function agents to “agentic workflows”
powered by multiple orchestrated AI agents. Google is
prototyping orchestration with projects like Astra, that signal
a future where AI is not only intelligent but contextually
aware and collaborative.



The Big Quote: “People . . . spend a lot of time just trying to
take a PDF and analyze it. It seems very true. It is a pain . . I
think that’s one reason why a NotebookLM or a product like that
has been so popular because it really attacks like the heart of
what people hate doing at work. [AI] puts them in the driver’s
seat. They can ask questions, they can do analysis.”


Learn more:


Check out OCTO, NotebookLM, and Google Cloud.


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