Google's new Gemini agent will run some jobs on Anthropic's Claude

Google's new work agent will run some jobs on Anthropic's Claude models instead of its own Gemini models, Google said Thursday.

Google Cloud announced the Gemini agent at its Gemini at Work 2026 event. In a post adapted from his keynote, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian wrote: "Gemini is the agent, and the model underneath it is a separate choice."

The agent "runs each job on the model that fits best — orchestrating across our Gemini family of models and Claude models from Anthropic today, and other leading private and open models in the future — to deliver optimal quality and lower your costs," Kurian wrote. "The best model for the task is not always the largest one."

Google's wording puts Gemini in charge of choosing the model, backed by a "smart routing" tool that sends each workload to the model with the best performance "at the lowest possible cost." TechCrunch reported that users can also take over and pick a model themselves, starting with Claude.

Google pitches the agent as a coworker that plans tasks, connects to tools such as Slack, Microsoft 365, Jira and Snowflake, and logs every action "to an audit trail and attributed to the agent rather than to a person." Google said sportswear brand On tested the model-selection feature. Google's posts give no pricing or general-availability date.

Kurian framed the move as insurance for customers: "the leading model changes every few months, so keeping that choice open means your context, your skills, and your data stay put when it does."

For businesses, that means Google is selling the agent rather than only its model, and companies buying Gemini may end up paying, in part, for Claude.