Foreseeing the next decade of consumer packaged goods being shaped beyond traditional retail shelves, Unilever and Google Cloud are working together to leverage the latest technology to influence consumers.
In a new five-year partnership announced on February 17, 2026, the two companies will accelerate the transformation underway of using advanced AI, data, cloud platform services, and next-generation marketing capabilities.
Willem Uijen, Unilever’s chief supply chain and operations officer, summarized the strategic motivation: “Technology has moved to the core of value creation at Unilever.”
He also emphasized that as brands are increasingly discovered and chosen in AI-driven environments, Unilever intends to lead this shift.
The partnering of the two companies and other CPG companies recognize that consumer journeys are rapidly changing. They are moving toward conversational search, AI-assisted discovery, and agentic experiences. This is where software not only recommends products but also acts on behalf of shoppers.
In this environment, visibility, desirability, and conversion depend less on advertising spend and placement. It is about how products are discovered, compared, and purchased within AI-driven platforms.
Building a new model for discovery and shopping
Unilever and Google Cloud plan to develop new capabilities in brand discovery, measurement, and AI-augmented marketing. The focus will be on using Google Cloud technologies, including Vertex AI, the enterprise AI platform.
The goal is to transform how brands are discovered and purchased by consumers. They are moving toward greater use of chat-based interfaces and agentic tools.
Historically, CPG brands focused on mass reach, retail execution, and incremental improvements to marketing mix modeling.
Now, gaining consumer attention depends on the quality and accessibility of product information in AI-driven contexts. This is influenced by a few factors. That includes the speed of experimentation across channels and the ability to measure how consumer decisions are made in conversational interfaces, replacing traditional search results.
Tara Brady, president for EMEA at Google Cloud, described the partnership as more than a systems modernization effort. He emphasized deploying advanced models, such as Gemini, to create a “system of intelligence” capable of reasoning, learning, and acting.
In practice, this approach enables AI to help teams move from insight to execution more quickly by analyzing signals, proposing actions, and triggering workflows across marketing and operational systems.
How it will work
Unilever’s plan is to migrate its integrated data and cloud platform to Google Cloud, creating an enterprise-wide, AI-first digital backbone. The result will be demand more quickly, convert data into actionable insights, and respond to market changes with greater agility.
For a global company operating across multiple categories such as Beauty & Wellbeing, Personal Care, Home Care, and Foods, agility is often limited by fragmented data, legacy platforms, inconsistent governance, and siloed applications.
A unified cloud and data environment can reduce friction in deploying AI at scale. This is because models require consistent, accessible, and well-governed data. The company also gains a platform for experimentation, allowing new creative formats, audience strategies, and conversion paths to be tested without rebuilding infrastructure each time.
Equally important, the partnership highlights agentic workflows, which are intelligent systems capable of executing complex tasks across business processes.
These workflows may include marketing operations such as creative iteration and campaign optimization, and product content management to ensure accurate and consistent information across digital platforms. This extends to other areas of the value chain that benefit from faster decision cycles.
The collaboration will focus on three core pillars, each intended to reinforce the others: agentic commerce and marketing intelligence, integrated and cloud foundation, and advanced AI adoption.
“Technology at the core of value creation”
Univeler is seeing a broader trend in consumer goods: technology now extends beyond back-office efficiency or incremental supply chain improvements. It increasingly shapes demand creation, brand preference, and the entire purchase journey in the CPG industry.
This partnership could serve as a blueprint for large CPG companies to modernize in the age of agency. That would include unifying data and cloud infrastructure, embedding AI into marketing and measurement, and developing workflows that can act responsibly and quickly.
For consumers, it hints at a shopping experience where discovery feels more personalized and conversational.
With AI reshaping discovery, Unilever’s partnership with Google Cloud may be as much about securing future digital shelf space as it is about modernizing the enterprise.
