Google unveils Gemini Spark — first 24/7 cloud agent runs in the background while your phone is locked, AI Ultra exclusive
Google announced Gemini Spark at I/O 2026 on May 19 as the first fully cloud-resident 24/7 AI agent. Because Spark runs in Google's cloud rather than on-device, it keeps working in the background when you lock your phone — a category shift from session-bounded assistants to persistent agents. It is rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers first.
The architectural distinction matters more than the product framing. Until Spark, "agent" in the consumer market meant a long-running session inside a user-foregrounded app (Claude Code in a terminal, Cursor in an IDE, Operator in a browser tab). Spark is the first that's intentionally untethered from a foreground session — explicitly designed to keep running while the user is not present. That changes the per-user compute economics: an agent that runs 24/7 consumes orders of magnitude more inference than an agent that runs while you're typing.
The pricing implication is the AI Ultra tier becoming the only sustainable home for the product. The same week, Google updated AI Ultra to start at $99.99/mo for 5× Pro limits and capped the former $249.99 top tier at $200/mo with the 20× usage ceiling. The pricing surface is rationalizing around the cost-per-token reality the Microsoft Claude Code cancellation and Goldman 24× forecast describe from different angles. 24/7 cloud agents are a premium-tier-only product.
CNBC — Google unveils AI model Gemini 3.5 and Gemini Spark → · TechCrunch — Google updates Gemini app to take on ChatGPT and Claude at IO 2026 → · 9to5Google — Gemini Omni create anything model starts today →