Google bets Gemini Spark and 3.5 Flash can catch OpenClaw's agentic AI success

Google announced Gemini Spark at I/O 2026, a cloud-based AI agent that runs continuously in the background and operates across Google's services and more than 30 external partners including Dropbox, Uber, and Spotify. The agent enters trusted testing this week, with a beta launching next week for Google Ultra plan subscribers in the US.

The announcement comes six months after OpenClaw's November 2025 launch, which has gained millions of users by letting people chat with agents via WhatsApp and Telegram while performing tasks around the clock. OpenAI acquired OpenClaw in February 2026 while keeping it open-source.

Gemini 3.5 Flash: 4x faster, half the cost

Gemini Spark will be powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash, launching next month. According to Google CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu, the model is "four times faster than other frontier models and less than half (or in some cases, one third of) the price." The model is designed specifically for "deploying multiple agents simultaneously and completing long-running tasks."

Gemini Spark syncs across web, Android, and iOS without requiring an open laptop. Google's Josh Woodward, Gemini app lead, says use cases include shopping, research, and schedule coordination. Unlike Google's earlier browser-hijacking experiments and last year's Gemini 3 agents that handled some tasks well but failed at others, Spark mirrors OpenClaw's key feature: long-running background operation with direct text and email communication.

Search agents and developer tools

Starting this summer, Google Search will add "information agents" for continuous background research tasks like tracking stock markets or weather patterns. The company also expanded Antigravity, its agentic development platform introduced six months ago, with a new standalone desktop app for building and managing autonomous agents.

Google introduced Daily Brief, a morning update similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT Pulse. The Gemini app now serves more than 900 million users per month across 230+ countries and 70+ languages, according to company executives.

What this means

Google's infrastructure advantage is obvious: deep integration with Gmail, Drive, Docs, Photos, and Search gives it distribution and context that OpenClaw or OpenAI can't match. But the company is playing catch-up to a one-person project that forced the entire industry to take agents seriously. The Gemini 3.5 Flash pricing strategy—subsidized by Google's broader business—aims to make 24/7 agent operation economically viable where token costs quickly compound. If Google with its ecosystem, scale, and resources can't make agents reliably useful, the fundamental concept may need rethinking beyond current architectures.