Google Cloud Bets $750 Million on Partners to Put Gemini Into Production

Google Cloud’s $750 million partner fund, announced in April for its 120,000-member ecosystem, will put Google’s own forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) beside integrators such as Accenture, Deloitte and TCS, the company said.

The fund pays for partners’ presales, proof-of-concept and training work, and it comes with a condition: the money goes to partners that have bet on Google’s AI platform, so the integrator an enterprise picks to reach production may arrive with Google’s incentives attached.

What does the money pay for?

Google says the fund pays for work that runs from sizing the value of an AI project through prototypes and deployment, plus security reviews and incentives tied to usage. It also covers training. Samrah Khan, director of global and regional systems integrator partnerships at Google, said the funding goes “strictly” to partners focused on helping customers adopt Gemini, according to a published report. The money is meant to help those partners build their own FDE practices, the report said.

Google trains partner staff on its FDE courses at no charge, and in return expects partners to build sales and FDE capacity and earn AI certifications. Partners enroll through Google’s Gemini Enterprise Transformation program. Google did not say how the $750 million divides among training, incentives and engineers, so the size of any one partner’s share is unknown.

How does a partner use it?

66degrees, a Chicago-based Google Cloud partner, is leaning into the program and training its teams as FDEs. About 20% of its workforce is FDEs, the report said. Ben Kessler, the firm’s CEO, said employees finish an in-house FDE course before they go through Google’s. “So many customers get stuck in a POC trap,” he said, referring to proofs of concept that never reach production. The fix he described is staff organized around specific business functions.

Google also lends engineers. Khan said some partners have Google FDEs assigned to shadow them on customer projects, and that partner staff who have completed Gemini implementations are sent into accounts where Google is short on people.

What should a buyer weigh?

Google leaves delivery to the partners by design. “We’re not a services company. We are a technology platform,” Khan said.

Khan said Google needs partners to get its AI platforms adopted and scaled. Google did not say whether partners tell customers which parts of a project the fund covers.

Which of the company’s AI pilots are being delivered on a partner’s vendor-funded time?