HCLTech Bets Gemini Agents Can Restart Slowing Growth

HCLTech on June 25, 2026 expanded its collaboration with Google Cloud and ServiceNow to ship enterprise AI agents on Gemini Enterprise. The Noida firm is betting that agents sitting inside tickets, trucks, and factory lines can lift growth after it guided FY27 company revenue as low as 1 percent in constant currency.

That is a three-way agentic AI pact aimed at production work, not another chatbot demo. The timing sat at the end of a quarter in which Advanced AI was still a thin slice of sales, and the Sydney events that carried the pitch are already over.

Four Agents Aimed at Work That Already Has Tickets

The package ties Gemini models to ServiceNow workflows and HCLTech’s industry delivery. Vijay Guntur, chief technology officer and head of ecosystems at HCLTech, said enterprises are moving from exploring AI to embedding it in operations, and that this shift needs tighter integration and orchestration. Jagadeshwar Gattu, president of Digital Foundation Services, said agentic AI only pays when it sits on a resilient, secure, and scalable digital foundation.

HCLTech said it is using ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower so clients can see and govern agents that run inside Gemini Enterprise. One SKU, an ITOps ServiceNow Agent for incident management and remediation, is listed on Google Cloud Marketplace for Gemini Enterprise.

THE FOUR LIVE WORKLOADS

Satish Thomas, vice president of applied AI and platform ecosystem at Google Cloud, said bringing agentic AI into the enterprise “requires deep integration into the systems that businesses rely on every day.” Michael Park, senior vice president of global partnerships and channels at ServiceNow, called the goal a connected system of action across workflows, systems, and teams.

The $171 Million Book Against a $3.65 Billion Quarter

On July 13, 2026, HCLTech reported the quarter ended June 30. USD revenue was $3.65 billion, up 3 percent year on year and up 2.6 percent in constant currency, while sequential constant-currency revenue fell 0.5 percent. INR revenue was Rs 34,579 crore, up 13.9 percent year on year.

Inside that print sat the figure the June pitch has to outgrow. Advanced AI revenue of $171 million rose 10.6 percent quarter on quarter and 62.1 percent year on year in constant currency. That is 4.7 percent of the $3.65 billion quarter. The June 25 deal landed five days before the quarter closed, so $171 million is the run-rate going into the wager, not revenue from the new agents.

THE AI BOOK VERSUS THE CORE

• FY26 base: USD revenue was $14.7 billion, up 6 percent, with constant-currency growth of 3.9 percent for the year ended March 31, 2026.
• Q4 AI run-rate: Annualized Advanced AI was $620 million in Q4 FY26, or 4.2 percent of that $14.7 billion year.
• Q1 bookings: Net-new bookings were $2.4 billion, the highest first quarter the company has recorded.
• FY27 guide: Company growth 1 percent to 4 percent in constant currency; services 1.5 percent to 4.5 percent; EBIT margin 17.5 percent to 18.5 percent.

C Vijayakumar, CEO and managing director, said the $2.4 billion bookings and the 62.1 percent Advanced AI rise show enterprises are choosing HCLTech for AI-led work, and that this gives confidence the firm can outpace the market over the medium term. Shiv Walia, chief financial officer, said EBIT margin was 16.9 percent in Q1, including 62 basis points of restructuring cost, and 17.5 percent excluding it. Net income was Rs 4,624 crore, up 20.3 percent year on year.

Around the June announcement, the shares had already dropped 33.03 percent over one year and 32.35 percent over six months. The core is still a large IT services machine. IT and Business Services grew 4.2 percent year on year in constant currency in Q1. HCLSoftware annual recurring revenue was $1.06 billion, up 2 percent. The company also said it may invest up to Rs 3,500 crore (about $370 million) in AI data centers with potential to reach 50MW, and it cited an AI Factory expansion with incremental scope of more than $180 million. Those are separate bets on capacity and factories, not the ServiceNow agents.

ServiceNow Owns the Workflows Gemini Needs to Touch

Google launched Gemini Enterprise on October 9, 2025 as the workplace front door for its models. On April 22, 2026, at Google Cloud Next, it added an Agent Platform, long-running agents, and an Agent Marketplace inside Gemini Enterprise that already listed partners such as ServiceNow, Accenture, and Oracle. Google Cloud also said paid monthly active users of Gemini Enterprise rose 40 percent quarter on quarter in that Q1.

HCLTech had already stood up a dedicated Gemini Enterprise business unit on April 22, 2026, two months before the ServiceNow expansion. The Google Cloud partnership page now lists eight years together, Premier Consulting Partner status, more than 30,000 Google Cloud-trained staff, more than 500 client implementations, and Partner of the Year 2026 for infrastructure modernization and industry solutions.

Enterprises are moving quickly from exploring AI to embedding it at the core of their operations, and that shift requires stronger levels of integration and orchestration. Our collaboration with Google Cloud and ServiceNow reflects this evolution.

Vijay Guntur, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Ecosystems, HCLTech, June 25, 2026 press release

ServiceNow’s pitch is that intelligence without a place to execute is expensive advice. The June deal is anchored in its Blueprint for Agentic Business, and HCLTech pointed readers to the Blueprint for Agentic Business executive brief. Park said the three firms together help customers orchestrate agents across workflows and strengthen governance. HCLTech’s seat is implementation and industry context, not the model and not the system of record.

That split is why the Control Tower matters more than another assistant name. ServiceNow sells the product as a central hub to govern any AI agent, model, and MCP server, including ones that do not run on ServiceNow. For a services firm, the paid work is connecting Gemini agents to those workflows without losing audit trails. If that layer holds, HCLTech keeps a bill. If clients buy agents off the Marketplace and govern them in ServiceNow alone, the bill shrinks.

Shop-Floor Proof Comes Before Another Pilot

The Factory Shop Floor Assistant is the clearest statement of the bet. HCLTech says it feeds live operational intelligence to manufacturing so supervisors can decide faster. The company has talked about plant-floor Gemini agents since October 2025, including a shop-floor analyst built on Google Cloud’s Manufacturing Data Engine. The June product is the version tied to ServiceNow’s workflow spine, which is what turns a dashboard into a ticket, a work order, or a stop-the-line action.

Gemini Live in field service is the other physical test. Technicians get real-time audio and visual intelligence through ServiceNow Field Service Management, which is a polite way of saying the model watches the job with them. Customer-experience tools are thinner in the release: they exist to keep intent intact when a case hops from chat to phone to portal. None of the four launches named a paying plant, fleet, or contact center.

Physical work is also where HCLTech already sells adjacent AI. The Q1 release listed a Europe-based manufacturer hiring it for an autonomous-robot navigation stack and a U.S. semiconductor firm using its AI engineering for a vehicle chip. Those deals sit in Advanced AI. They are not the ServiceNow agents. They show why the firm wants Gemini in factories rather than only in help desks: the client already pays for metal, sensors, and downtime, and a missed incident is visible in output, not in a satisfaction score.

A Marketplace Listing Cuts Both Ways

Putting an ITOps ServiceNow Agent on Google Cloud Marketplace is distribution. A buyer can find it next to other Gemini Enterprise partner agents without opening an HCLTech statement of work. For a firm that still grows by filling seats, that is also a warning. Hosted agents and coding tools squeeze the hours that used to sit in incident queues and application maintenance, which is the same labor pool Indian IT has sold for two decades.

The market still prices that risk more than the new work. Shares around the June print had already given up about a third over a year, even as Advanced AI grew 62.1 percent and bookings hit $2.4 billion. One clean way to read the tape is that investors are discounting contracts AI might erase, not the ones AI might create. HCLTech’s counter is to sell the wiring: Gemini for inference, ServiceNow for the ticket, HCLTech for the plant and the night shift.

Accenture made the same reading at larger scale. On September 8, 2026, it launched an Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group with Google Cloud and said it would build a 1,000-person forward deployed engineer workforce. Google’s Marketplace already named Accenture beside ServiceNow and Oracle. HCLTech’s June agents are the Indian IT version of that land grab, with a smaller public headcount claim and a heavier shop-floor slant.

Citi Keeps a Sell After the Sydney Pitch

HCLTech said the June launch coincided with its sponsorship of the Sydney Google Cloud Summit 2026, which streamed on June 24. It also said it would show the same stack at the Sydney ServiceNow World Forum on July 30, 2026 at the International Convention Centre. Both dates are past. The pitch had its stage. What it did not get, in public, is a named factory that cut downtime or a field fleet that closed jobs faster.

THE WAGER, IN ORDER

1. October 9, 2025: Google Cloud launches Gemini Enterprise as the workplace front door for its models.
2. April 22, 2026: HCLTech opens a Gemini Enterprise business unit; Google Cloud Next adds Agent Platform and a partner Marketplace that includes ServiceNow.
3. June 24, 2026: Sydney Google Cloud Summit streams; HCLTech is a sponsor.
4. June 25, 2026: HCLTech, Google Cloud, and ServiceNow announce the four enterprise agents.
5. June 30, 2026: Q1 FY27 closes with $171 million of Advanced AI on $3.65 billion of USD revenue.
6. July 30, 2026: ServiceNow World Forum Sydney runs at ICC Darling Harbour.
7. September 8, 2026: Accenture launches a Gemini Enterprise Business Group and a 1,000-person forward deployed engineer plan.
8. September 10, 2026: Citi keeps a Sell rating and a Rs 1,110 target, saying HCLTech’s AI opportunity is not yet showing up in revenue the way peers’ books do, and looking for about 5 percent earnings-per-share growth through FY29.

Citi’s note does not kill the June product list. It says the scoreboard still does not. Vijayakumar’s own FY26 line was that FY27’s first job is to place the company to take AI work for “multi-decade value creation.” The agents on Gemini Enterprise are that placement: a Factory Shop Floor Assistant, a live field kit, a customer-intent layer, and an ITOps SKU on a shelf Google already owns. Until a plant or a fleet shows the hours coming back as revenue that moves a $3.65 billion quarter, the wager is still open.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise?

Google Cloud introduced Gemini Enterprise on October 9, 2025 as the workplace front door for Gemini models, replacing the earlier Agentspace app. On April 22, 2026 it added Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, with Agent Identity, an Agent Registry, and an Agent Gateway so each agent can be traced, catalogued, and fenced before it touches company data.

What Is ServiceNow’s Blueprint for Agentic Business?

It is ServiceNow’s framework for putting agents inside real workflows instead of leaving them as chat tools. The architecture it teaches is Sense, Decide, Act, and Govern, and the course material states that intelligence without execution is expensive advice because the advantage sits with whoever can apply the model inside the systems where work already happens.

When Did HCLTech Open Its Gemini Enterprise Business Unit?

HCLTech launched the unit on April 22, 2026, two months before the ServiceNow expansion, to build industry-specific agents on Google Cloud’s agentic platform. Kevin Ichhpurani, president of the global partner ecosystem at Google Cloud, said the unit pairs HCLTech’s industry skill with that platform so joint customers get tailored solutions rather than generic pilots.

What Does ServiceNow AI Control Tower Cover?

ServiceNow describes AI Control Tower as a command center that discovers, secures, governs, observes, and measures AI across the estate, including third-party agents and MCP servers, and ties that inventory to the CMDB. A May 2026 platform update added about 30 connectors spanning Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, SAP, Oracle, and Workday so the tower can see models that do not run on ServiceNow.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a corporate product launch and related financial figures. It is informational only and is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell HCLTech or any other security, or a forecast of returns. Readers who may act on company guidance, broker targets, or partnership claims should consult a qualified financial adviser or licensed analyst who can assess their own situation. Figures, ratings, and product statuses reflect the company statements, broker note, and platform pages cited and can change with later results, listings, or guidance updates.