Google says at Cloud Next ’26 that it is pushing further into the ‘agentic Gemini era’, with new enterprise tooling and eighth-generation TPUs designed to help organisations build, manage and scale large numbers of AI agents.

Reuters reports that Lloyds Banking Group has begun piloting an AI tool through Scottish Widows to help customers with investment guidance, making it the first UK lender to roll out such a product. AI is now being placed closer to consumer-facing financial decision support while the FCA is simultaneously reviewing how AI could reshape market power, supervision and the boundary between guidance and regulated advice.

Reuters reports that Google is discussing a deal with the US Department of Defense that could allow Gemini models to be deployed in classified settings for lawful uses. That is notable not because the arrangement is final, but because it shows frontier models moving further into state security infrastructure.

Reuters reports that Cadence and Nvidia are partnering to develop AI for robotics by combining Cadence physics engines with Nvidia models trained in simulation.

Reuters reports that Amazon has launched an AI research tool aimed at speeding early-stage drug discovery, placing one of the largest cloud providers more directly inside life-sciences R&D workflows rather than only selling general infrastructure.