The Decoder · 10/23/2026, 01:50:09
Google Launches Agent Compute Engine with Hardware-Isolated MicroVMs for AI Agents
Google has introduced Agent Compute Engine, a service providing hardware-isolated microVMs for each Gemini agent using Titanium chip security. The platform reduces costs by automatically pausing idle VMs and sharing memory, while the open-sourced Agent Substrate runtime enables high-density agent deployment on Kubernetes.
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Google announced Agent Compute Engine, a service that gives each AI agent its own isolated virtual machine. The service already powers Gemini and will open for preview in the coming months. Every agent runs inside a microVM secured by Google's Titanium chip, the company says. When an agent idles, its VM pauses automatically and frees up the machine for others. Shared memory between VMs cuts what each one costs to run. VMs are a pretty huge cost factor when providing agentic systems, so Google is going after efficiency here.
This is also behind the open-sourced Agent Substrate, a Kubernetes runtime. Google says it can fit ten times as many agents on a single server. In a test with 200,000 agents, suspend and resume took less than 500 milliseconds, according to Google. On the oversight side, Google is adding token tracking, model routing, and support for third-party identity providers like Ping Identity and SailPoint. Those controls will extend to Cloud Run, GKE, and managed endpoints.