AI is playing a key role in winning more deals: Google Cloud CEO

Artificial Intelligence is playing a key role in pushing Google Cloud growth in India, which is one of the key markets for the technology giant.

Thomas Kurian, global CEO of Google Cloud, said that unlike in the past, where cloud computing was solely about cost, AI changes the way customers think about which partner to choose .

With AI becoming an integral part of the business, customers are looking at the data and tools that can accelerate their AI journey.

With AI fuelling its growth in many ways, Google has been closing the gap with its larger peers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

“A lot of that has been because they started much earlier than us. You see that both in our revenue growth, which are public, in our bookings growth, and customer adoption,” Kurian said.

Investment and tariffs

Google is investing $75 billion in 2025, a large portion of it will be in infrastructure such as servers and data centers, despite the lack of clarity around tariffs. The announcements first came in February, which was reaffirmed by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google Cloud Next 2025 conference last week.

Responding to ET’s question of tariffs, Kurian said, they have been through many issues in the past and they will continue to work with national governments to get the right resolution. “We know how to work through the changes in the geopolitical environment,” he added.

Matt Renner, president, Global Revenue, Google Cloud, told ET that they have not changed the strategy and what they are going to spend on. “We are very focused on AI and investment in AI. We believe this is generational technology. We also believe that the companies that miss the wave on this potentially could fall by the wayside. So we are fully convinced that this is a good investment at this time,” he added.

India growth

In the last two years the company has seen significant growth not just in India, but also globally. Renner said that the company is winning more deals than they did two years ago. With Google Deepmind and the innovation across the technology stack, both hardware and software, Renner said, “We do believe our engineering is an advantage.”

Karan Bajwa, President, Asia Pacific, explained that the success Google had initially was very strong among digital natives such as ShareChat, verSe, Glance and now expanding it to companies like InMobi, and Flipkart. It is getting deeper into the traditional enterprise market as well.

However, the challenges remain.

Challenges

Renner said that there are three potential barriers the company is working on – shortage of talent, processors and power usage. He explained that there is a shortage of talent in AI and some of the processors, which is currently being solved. Power and energy usage was identified with one of the challenges. “As these models get more efficient, they are not going to drain the power like we were worried about,” he added.

When it comes to responsible AI, the company is looking at it from two aspects, ethical use of its products and ensuring security. The company is working on some of the solutions through its security product Mandiant, and its latest acquisition Wiz will complete it, he added.

Google Cloud, launched in 2008, generated $12 billion in revenue in Q4 2024, with an annual run rate of $48 billion. However, the company was lagging behind its competitors Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to reports, it has a market share of 12%, whereas AWS dominates the market with 30% and Microsoft Azure at 21%.

The writer was at the Google Cloud Next 2025 in Las Vegas at the invitation of Google.