Google Cloud Updates a Series of New AI Tools Available at Google I/O

This month has been one of our biggest yet – from over 100 announcements at I/O, to announcing critical new partnerships such as Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 on Vertex AI, to launching a first-of-its kind generative AI certification for non-technical learners.

Today, we’re taking you through the biggest news this month, helpful guides to get started, and some inspiration for your next project with the May edition of our new series here.

Top announcements

Google I/O brought a fresh wave of tools from Google Cloud, all designed to help businesses and developers build what's next. These updates bring new ways for organizations to work with AI, code more easily, create media, and manage intelligent agents. Here are the highlights:

1. We introduced new generative AI models for media, including Veo 3 for video, Imagen 4 for images, and Lyria 2 for music on Vertex AI. These models give you excellent ways to create visual and audio content from text prompts. Learn more in our blog here.
2. We've expanded Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro model capabilities to help enterprises build more sophisticated and secure AI-driven applications and agents. With thought summaries, businesses get clarity and auditability of a model’s raw thoughts — including key details and tool usage. The new Deep Think mode uses research techniques that enable the model to consider multiple hypotheses before responding.
3. Gemini 2.5 is now powering all Gemini Code Assist editions! We also launched Jules, a new autonomous AI coding agent, now in public beta, designed to understand user intent and perform coding tasks like writing tests and fixing bugs
4. Firebase Studio is a cloud-based, AI workspace powered by Gemini 2.5 that lets you turn your ideas into a full-stack app in minutes. Now you can import Figma designs directly into Firebase Studio using the builder.io plugin, and then add features and functionality using Gemini in Firebase without having to write any code.
5. We're making AI application deployment significantly easier with Cloud Run, launching three key updates: first, you can now deploy applications built in Google AI Studio directly to Cloud Run with just a single button click; second, we enabled direct deployment of Gemma 3 models from AI Studio to Cloud Run, complete with GPU support for scalable, pay-per-use endpoints; and third, we've introduced a new Cloud Run MCP server, which empowers MCP-compatible AI agents (like AI assistants, IDE integrations, or SDKs) to programmatically deploy applications. Read more here. 

The news didn’t stop with I/O – we announced several important announcements to help you deploy AI at scale:

1. Introducing the next generation of AI inference, powered by llm-d: We’re making inference even easier and more cost-effective, by making vLLM fully scalable with Kubernetes-native distributed and disaggregated inference. This new project is called llm-d. Google Cloud is a founding contributor alongside Red Hat, IBM Research, NVIDIA, and CoreWeave, joined by other industry leaders AMD, Cisco, Hugging Face, Intel, Lambda, and Mistral AI.
2. Mistral AI's Le Chat Enterprise and Mistral OCR 25.05 model are available on Google Cloud. Available today on Google Cloud Marketplace, Mistral AI's Le Chat Enterprise is a generative AI work assistant designed to connect tools and data in a unified platform for enhanced productivity.
3. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 on Vertex AI. Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 are generally available as a Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) offering on Vertex AI. For more information on the newest Claude models, visit Anthropic’s blog.

…and made strides in security: 

1. What’s new with Google Cloud’s Risk Protection Program. We unveiled at Google Cloud Next major updates to our Risk Protection Program, an industry-first collaboration between Google and insurers that provides competitively priced cyber-insurance and broad coverage for Google Cloud customers. We’re now including Affirmative AI insurance coverage for your Google-related AI workloads. Here’s what’s new. .
2. How Confidential Computing lays the foundation for trusted AI Our latest Confidential Computing innovations highlight the creative ways our customers are using Confidential Computing to protect their most sensitive workloads including AI. .
3. How governments can use AI to improve threat detection and reduce cost In the latest Cloud CISO Perspectives newsletter, our Office of the CISO’s Enrique Alvarez, public sector advisor, explains how government agencies can use AI to improve threat detection — and save money. . 

News you can use: Actionable ways to get started

Get fluent in generative AI: 

62% of employers now expect candidates and employees to possess at least some familiarity with AI. That’s why we launched a first-of-its kind generative AI certification for non-technical learners—plus a new suite of no-cost training to help you prepare for that certification. That means you — and your company — can be among the first to take advantage of this opportunity to validate your strategic acumen in gen AI. Become a generative AI leader today.

Then, put generative AI to work 

At I/O, we expanded generative AI media on Vertex AI. But how do you get started, today? To help you make the most of all the latest generative AI media announcements, we redesigned Vertex AI Studio. The developer-first experience will be your source for generative AI media models across all modalities. You’ll have access to Google’s powerful generative AI media models such as Veo, Imagen, Chirp and Lyria in the Vertex AI Media Studio.

Redesigned Vertex AI Studio

To help you turn your generative AI ideas into real web applications, we published this guide to create gen AI apps in less than 30 seconds with Vertex AI and Cloud Run. Any developer knows it’s a complex process to build shareable, interactive applications: you have to set up infrastructure, wire APIs, and build a front-end. It's usually a complex process. What if you could skip the heavy lifting and turn your generative AI concept into a working web app with just a few clicks?

New how-to series alert: Text-to-SQL agents 

Recently, powerful large language models (LLMs) like Gemini, with their abilities to reason and synthesize, have driven remarkable advancements in the field of text-to-SQL. In this blog post, the first entry in a series, we explore the technical internals of Google Cloud's text-to-SQL agents.

Real-life demo: What if we turned Gemini into an AI basketball coach? 

We rounded out this month with a deep-dive into a demo we showcased at Google Cloud Next and most recently, at I/O . In this article, we showed an AI experiment that turns Gemini 2.5 Pro into a jump shot coach. By combining a ring of Pixel cameras with Vertex AI, the coaching system connects AI motion capture, biomechanical analytics, and Gemini-powered coaching via text and voice.

“It’s like we always say: AI is only as good as the information you give it. For the AI basketball coach to be accurate, we knew we had to talk to actual, real-life professionals. So we talked to our partners at the Golden State Warriors and came up with essential criteria for helping you shoot like the pros.”

Stay tuned for monthly updates on Google Cloud’s AI announcements, news, and best practices. For a deeper dive into the latest from Google Cloud, read our weekly updates, The Overwhelmed Person’s Guide to Google Cloud.