GCP – London Summit: agentic AI leaders, training 100,000 civil servants, AI sovereignty, and more

There’s a buzz of excitement here at Tobacco Dock as we welcome our customers and partners to the Google Cloud Summit London. Together, we’re exploring the essential role Google Cloud is playing in driving AI innovation and adoption across the UK. Today is about shining a spotlight on our customers and partners, focusing on the real-world stories of how they are accelerating innovation, realising value, and reshaping entire industries with the powerful combination of AI agents and robust cloud infrastructure.

The opportunity ahead is immense. AI is poised to inject more than £400 billion into the UK economy by 2030, and this year’s summit reaffirms our long-term commitment to helping the UK realise its potential and shape its AI future.

Investing in Britain’s digital future

To lead in the AI era, a nation needs a strong digital foundation. That’s why we’re proud to announce a series of strategic commitments to the UK’s digital future.

First, we are launching a new partnership with the UK Government to help modernise public services. This collaboration marks a significant shift, exploring the use of advanced tech and AI to move beyond decades-old legacy contracts that can leave essential services vulnerable. It supports the UK Government’s “blueprint for a modern digital government” by aiming to streamline services, reduce costs, and lay the digital foundations for AI success.

Equally important, we’re investing in a world-class, AI-ready workforce. Today, we are announcing a landmark proposal to provide free cloud and AI skills training for up to 100,000 UK public sector workers. This initiative is designed to accelerate the digital transformation of public services and empower the workforce with the talent to lead in the AI era.

These commitments are backed by our continued investment in critical infrastructure. We are close to reaching a major milestone with our data center in Waltham Cross, which will be fully operational by the end of the year. Delivering on our promise, this facility will provide British businesses with the high-performance, low-latency cloud they need to compete globally.

From AI vision to real-world value

Agentic AI is emerging as a major force in enterprise technology, representing a foundational shift in how work gets done. We’re helping British businesses go beyond experimentation and embrace a new era of intelligent agents. With advanced models like Gemini on our Vertex AI platform, we’re giving businesses the toolkits to drive real results and realise value faster.

At the Summit, we’re showcasing how leading UK companies are already leveraging these capabilities to drive impact:

• Imperial War Museums is the first UK museum to use AI at scale to digitise and transcribe oral histories. Implemented by our partner Capgemini, the Gemini-engineered system will make more than 20,000 histories from 1945 to the early 2000s searchable and accessible.

• LUSH is taking advantage of Vertex AI and Cloud Storage to reduce packaging waste through AI-powered product recognition at checkout in its beauty shops.

• Morrisons’ new in-app Product Finder—built with BigQuery and Gemini—helps customers quickly locate products in its grocery stores. It was used 50,000 times a day during the most recent Easter period, proving its immense practical value.

• Starling Bank launched “Spending Intelligence,” an industry-leading AI tool powered by Gemini models. Customers can now understand their spending habits simply by asking natural language questions and getting instant analysis.

• Toolstation now offers customers highly accurate product search results online and in-store, powered by Vertex AI Search for Commerce, which is boosting customer satisfaction and sales.

Extending Our Impact Through a Trusted Ecosystem

Collaboration is fundamental to progress. The achievements we celebrate today wouldn’t be possible without our incredible network of partners. Our work with Capgemini is helping British-born companies like Additive Catchments, a majority non-profit-owned company, to deploy AI-powered water stewardship solutions. Leveraging Google Cloud, they provide real-time insights to improve water quality and safeguard ecosystems across the UK—a perfect example of technology for good. 

This kind of innovation isn’t happening in isolation. Since 2023, more than 60% of UK generative AI startups have chosen Google Cloud due to our deep commitment to the ecosystem. From our ‘Gemini for UK’ initiative, which offers up to £280,000 in cloud credits and access to expert mentorship and training, to our recent partnership with Tech London Advocates, our aim is to help founders scale faster. 

We’ve also secured spaces for top UK AI Startups on the Europe-wide Google for Startups accelerator. These companies, such as Martee ai, are on a mission to improve the face of grab-and-go food, for the benefit of people and the planet, and Dyad AI, which is helping healthcare providers improve care quality and automate administrative workflows. They will be joining 15 top AI startups from across Europe in receiving expert help from Google so they can take their startups to the next level.

Setting a Secure Foundation for a Bold Future

A big part of our mission is to be the most trusted cloud partner for businesses, exemplified through our leading security, data sovereignty, and responsible AI practices. At the summit, Lloyds Banking Group and Vodafone are sharing how they are using Google Cloud’s security tools to help protect their operations and innovate securely for millions of customers.

This deep commitment to security is why Google Cloud announced plans earlier this year to acquire Wiz. By integrating Wiz’s best-in-class, multi-cloud visibility with Mandiant’s unmatched threat intelligence, we will offer UK businesses proactive, comprehensive protection across their entire cloud estate.

For UK organizations, including the public sector, we’re also building trust in generative AI by ensuring data sovereignty and compliance, so they can use this technology while keeping their data completely secure. Today we are happy to share that Google Cloud is strengthening its UK data residency commitment, empowering organizations with the choice to keep Gemini 2.5 Flash processing entirely within the UK. This expansion opens up even more use cases for businesses operating here.

This combination of world-class security and a commitment to openness is the foundation upon which UK organizations can innovate with confidence. Our leadership in open-source technologies like Kubernetes enables them to build and run applications anywhere, knowing their data is protected by world-class security. Whether it’s a bank securing its services, a retailer reimagining the customer experience, or a startup building the next big thing, our goal is to provide the tools and the trust to build boldly. 

With that mission in mind, UK businesses have a real opportunity to lead on the global stage. Together, with our customers, partners, and the public sector, we’re building much more than a cloud platform; we’re helping UK organisations not only stay ahead but to move boldly into the future and shape the AI era.

Didn’t make it to London? Please browse our catalogue of upcoming events & sign up to join us at another exciting gathering of cloud and AI leaders from across industries and around the world.