Google Just Built An HR System For Agents

Google retired Vertex AI in a single afternoon and replaced it with the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform — what Sundar Pichai called "mission control for the agentic enterprise." Stephen Forte argues this is the moment AI agents got an HR system: cryptographic identity, a directory, an access gateway, and a performance review.

In this episode:

• Why Vertex AI is gone — and what the replacement actually does
• The four pillars of the Agent Platform translated into HR terms (hire, deploy, supervise, review)
• The traction numbers Google disclosed: 40% QoQ growth, 8M seats, 2,800 enterprises
• The structural reveal: Anthropic crossed $30B annualized revenue — and is now Google Cloud's largest TPU customer
• Two concrete moves to make this quarter, plus one CEO-mirror question to leave you with

The closing line: The compute will commoditize. The control plane will not.

Sources:

• Google Cloud — Introducing Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform
• ComputerWeekly — Pichai mission-control framing
• Infosecurity Magazine — Kurian zero-trust quote
• Google Cloud Docs — Agent Identity overview
• Business Analytics Review — A2A protocol and Anthropic on TPU