Only 2% of surveyed enterprises using AI agent platforms said the underlying model was the main reason they chose one. Flexibility, reliability, ease of development and control mattered much more, putting a practical question to companies selling agents and the systems that run them: how tightly do customers want to be tied to one provider?
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
VentureBeat Intelligence surveyed people at organisations with 100 or more employees for its August VB Pulse. Among 162 respondents using a listed orchestration platform, 78% said flexibility across models and tools, production reliability, ease of development or control over agent execution most influenced their choice. Only 2% chose alignment with a leading model as the main factor.
The report says 45% of all respondents use OpenAI’s Agents SDK or Responses API, while 39% use Google’s Enterprise Agent Platform and 27% use Anthropic’s Claude Platform. Use does not necessarily mean primary allegiance: among respondents using Claude Platform, 38% named it their primary orchestration platform, while 62% named another platform.
Read VentureBeat Intelligence’s report.
Key findings
- Flexibility beats model loyalty
Only 2% cited the underlying model as their main reason for choosing a platform; the report groups flexibility, reliability, development ease and execution control at 78%. - Many respondents expect control outside one provider
67% expect their agents’ control plane to sit at least partly outside a provider-managed service by the end of 2026. - Platform changes are on many roadmaps
60% plan to adopt a new, additional or replacement orchestration platform within 12 months, according to the survey.
Why it matters
An orchestration platform coordinates agents, tools and permissions. Choosing one can shape how easily a company moves between models, governs what agents can do and keeps track of costs. The survey suggests that enterprises may value that control and flexibility more than a platform’s close ties to its maker’s model.
These are survey responses, not a census of enterprise deployments. VentureBeat Intelligence also notes that July and August respondents differed, so the sharp change in the share reporting a single platform cannot be read as proof that companies switched during that period.
Our read
The striking number is not simply that model loyalty ranked low. It is that companies are buying the surrounding machinery for practical reasons while many plan to run, or are considering, more than one platform. For buyers, compare how a system handles permissions, monitoring and portability, not just how neatly it showcases its own model. The vendor’s front door may be inviting; check where the exits are.
What to watch
- Whether planned platform changes turn into actual deployments.
- Whether enterprises keep control planes independent or settle on provider-managed services.
- How vendors make cross-model flexibility work without adding a tangle of separate controls.
Discussion spark: If flexibility matters more than the model behind an agent platform, should enterprises favour independent orchestration tools, or do provider-built platforms still offer the better trade-off?
Sources and evidence
- Enterprises prioritize flexibility in AI platforms – VentureBeat (5 October 2026, 17:40 UTC)
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