At I/O 2026, Google announced AI agents for information gathering, event planning, and inbox summaries, aiming to compete with OpenClaw's viral success.

Google unveiled Gemini Spark, a cloud-based AI agent that can perform tasks across Google's services and more than 30 external partners including Dropbox, Uber, and Spotify. The agent runs 24/7 without keeping a laptop open and syncs across web, Android, and iOS. It rolls out to trusted testers this week, with a beta available in the US next week on Google's Ultra plan.

Gemini Spark mirrors key elements of OpenClaw (an open-source AI agent platform that gained millions of users since launching last November): long-running agents operating in the background, giving them more context about tasks and allowing users to text and email agents directly. Google is also introducing information agents for its AI search, designed to perform continuous background research like tracking stock market shifts or weather.

Google announced Gemini 3.5 Flash, a new model that should be available next month and is supposed to be four times faster than other frontier models and less than half (or in some cases, one third of) the price. Gemini 3.5 Flash is especially good when deploying multiple agents simultaneously and completing long-running tasks.

Google's Gemini app now serves more than 900 million users per month in more than 230 countries and more than 70 languages, giving it scale advantages over dedicated AI companies as it builds out agent capabilities.