Dive Brief:
- Unilever plans to migrate its data and cloud platform to Google Cloud as part of a five-year partnership that will allow the company to use tools such as Vertex AI — Google Cloud’s enterprise AI platform — to build an AI-first technology foundation, the two companies announced Tuesday.
- The consumer goods provider will integrate its enterprise apps and data platforms onto Google Cloud, accelerate adoption of advanced AI and bring agentic capabilities into the company’s marketing efforts.
- The deal will help Unilever power growth in the industry and remain “agile, fit for the future, and equipped to unlock value at every level of the company,” said Willem Uijen, chief supply chain and operations officer at the company, in a press release.
Dive Insight:
The Google Cloud partnership marks Unilever’s latest step to transform and orient its business operations around emerging technologies — including agentic AI.
Unilever, which includes brands such as Dove, Vaseline and Hellmann's, aims to deploy AI to increase demand generation and create targeted marketing content. The supplier also wants to partner with large language model providers and work with retailers on agentic shopping models. Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez described the company’s strategy as “creating a future fit model for how our brands are discovered and shopped,” during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call last week.
“We are making our organization fit for the AI age, transforming every link in the value chain, particularly around the consumer,” Fernandez said.
The supplier adopted a “go wide and go deep” AI strategy in 2024, training more than 23,000 employees on generative AI tools and deploying more than 500 AI projects globally. Unilever used AI in 2025 to improve social engagement, enable AI-powered marketing and reduce waste at its manufacturing facility in Hefei, China, according to the supplier.
The company's recent partnership with Google Cloud aims to create a new agentic model for consumers to discover and shop for packaged goods, according to the announcement.
“In partnering with Unilever as it boldly reimagines its business processes, we are not just modernizing legacy systems,” Tara Brady, president of Google Cloud EMEA, said in the press release. “We are deploying our advanced models, such as Gemini, to create a system of intelligence that reasons, learns and acts.”
