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Gap Inc. Taps Gemini Enterprise to Become ‘AI-First’ Retailer

Google unveils Gemini Enterprise, an AI-powered conversational platform for businesses that use Google Cloud. Gap, Gordon Food Service and Virgin Voyages share goals and early results.  

Gap Inc. announced it’s using Google Cloud and Gemini Enterprise to infuse artificial intelligence into all of its brands — Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta — to fuel innovation and enhance efficiency when it comes to apparel design, personalized marketing and more. 

The apparel brand has three major goals with the multi-year agreement with Google Cloud: 

  • Product innovation – AI will speed the design, planning and pricing processes.  
  • Customer Experience and Marketing Optimization – The AI will produce more relevant and personalized product recommendations both on-site and within its ads. 
  • Employee Empowerment – Gap is redesigning its workflows to incorporate AI agents for all of its teams to help with decision making and responsiveness.  

Gap is bringing over its 200 existing AI models into Gemini Enterprise to have everything in one platform.  

“AI is redefining what’s possible in retail, and we’re building our future technology roadmap around it,” Sven Gerjets, Chief Technology Officer at Gap Inc., said in the press release announcement.   

Google Unveils Gemini Enterprise

Gap’s announcement coincides with Google unveiling Gemini Enterprise for its Google Cloud customers. Google bills Gemini Enterprise as “an AI-powered conversational platform designed to bring the full power of Google AI to every employee for every workflow.” 

While the first wave of AI has been “stuck in silos,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian touts Gemini Enterprise as a full-stack approach to innovation and will orchestra complex work across an entire company. 

Beyond Gap’s commitment to using the technology in its operations, food service distributor Gordon Food Service and cruise line Virgin Voyages shared their results from using Gemini Enterprise.  

Using AI Agents at Virgin Voyages Cuts Campaign Creation by 40% 

Cruise line Virgin Voyages is using 50 AI agents across its brand, and especially for marketing and customer experience. One of its agents, dubbed “Email Ellie,” generates hyper-personalized marketing outreach and helps the cruise line reach more travelers.   

The agent drove a 40% decrease in time spent on campaign copy creation. This agent is now fully integrated into its email workflow.   

With this additional time, Virgin Voyages’ marketing team now focuses on high-value initiatives, such as new itineraries and elevating its brand storytelling, also using AI. These AI-generated campaigns drove a 28% year-over-year increase in July sales, according to the press release. 

“What excites me most about this partnership with Google Cloud is how it gives our teams back time to do what they do best — create joy, build connections and bring our brand to life,” said Nirmal Saverimuttu, CEO of Virgin Voyages. “‘Email Ellie’ is just the beginning. It’s already helped deliver record-breaking sales, and she’s proof that AI agents scale our impact and amplify our human touches.” 

Gordon Food Service Gains Efficiency For Complex Tasks 

Food distributor Gordon Food Service is using Gemini Enterprise for its IT and developer teams to build AI agents for more efficiency, unify its data access, conduct market research and create content.

The company’s 12,000 employees are using Gemini Enterprise beyond drafting emails and summarizing spreadsheets, and are encouraged to bring complex problems to the platform. For example, the company’s marketing managers are using agents to find solutions and strategies to increase market share and increase brand awareness faster than before.

“An agent on one of our internal teams can work with an agent on another one of our internal teams that allows us to string together much more complex tasks,” Chief Information Officer Brendan Bonthuis said in a video case study.  

The Gemini platform pulls data from multiple software providers, such as ServiceNow and Jira, into one place. That saves its teams time when researching solutions.  

In terms of content creation, the food service provider’s human resources team is using the podcast feature to create content that explains its benefit system for its employees.