Unlocking Artificial Intelligence Advantages with Google

Philly AI Connect hosted an AI-themed event at the University of Pennsylvania’s Pennovation Center on December 9, 2025. It featured 2 AI-centric programs and a networking session.

The first program ‘Building Better Software Faster with Gemini’ was hosted by Greg Thomas, Customer Engineer, Applied AI with Google. Here are some highlights from the program:

• AI adoption has arrived in software development, as developers are frequently using it to write new code.

• About 16% of software developer time is spent coding.

• Enterprise AI adoption is being driven by a focus on quality and software delivery performance.

• He described the transformative Google Agentic AI environment. 

• He described a Jules AI powered code agent and then introduced Gemini CLI.

• Agentic AI tools are being used like an assistants.

• He conducted a Gemini CLI demonstration. It was a full lifecycle demonstration from generating code through development operations automation. The demonstration was orchestrating (not writing) code for a solution which took under 10 minutes.

  

The Keynote speaker Len Henry, Lead Principle VC Strategy & Startups at Google, then presented 'Unlocking AI Advantage with Google Cloud'. Here are some highlights from the program:

• Len used AI to create the slides, which looked great!

• He introduced the Google for Startups platform. “We not only speak the startup language, we actually live it.”

• He described the startup journey for participating companies, with programs available for startups of all sizes.

• Google hosts a variety of collaborative workshops and events for startup founders.

• AI talent is highly sought after currently - even recent graduates. 

• Google tools are battle-tested, and designed especially for users.

• He described the recently released Gemini 3, focused on three categories: SOTA Reasoning, Agentic Coding and Advanced Tool Use.

• Models are so sophisticated now, that you increasingly won’t be able to tell what is AI and what isn’t. He displayed some examples of AI images, and he was right.

• Google is still iterating, still coming up with new ideas and developing concepts. He expects things to get more “accurate, complicated and life-like.”

• Astra is a future project, like Iron Man's Jarvis.

• Google wants to work with single person founders with AI agents as assistants.

"Keep in mind that you could be working to solve a problem that the large companies aren’t looking to solve yet, so keep developing," Henry said. It is an interesting and valid point, because the problem that you may be solving for may be more niche or specific of an issue than a large corporation would be looking to focus on.

Henry recommends participating in startup communities, Reddit threads and related networking events to keep learning about AI and getting exposure to the projects that are being worked on.

To see more event photos and slides from the two presentations, click here.

Philly AI Connect regularly hosts events with speakers, Q&A sessions, networking and product demonstrations across the Philadelphia area. Their goal is "to build a thriving community of minds dedicated to advancing AI and ML technology and its sophistication of use in and beyond the city of Philadelphia. Click here for more information.

I also wrote an article about a previous Philly AI Connect event here - The Agentic AI Shift-From Tool to Teammate

Andrew C. Belton, MBA is a Marketing, Proposal and Content Management Professional, Writer and Owner of Symmetrical Media Marketing where he helps small businesses to create effective digital marketing strategies. He has been featured in LinkedIn News, LinkedIn Pulse, Startup Stash, Venture and Business2Community. He is a Philadelphia native, West Chester University of Pennsylvania graduate and is passionate about helping small businesses, education and challenging the limits of technology and communications.