The reason big tech is giving away AI agent frameworks

The New Stack

by Janakiram MSV

February 20, 2026

AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary

The article explores the parallels between the container orchestration wars of the past and the current competition among AI agent frameworks. Just as Kubernetes emerged dominant not because of technical superiority but due to strong backing from hyperscalers and community support, today's AI frameworks are part of a broader strategy by tech giants to control the ecosystem. These companies are offering frameworks for free while monetizing their paid inference and deployment runtimes, mirroring the "give away the orchestrator, monetize the infrastructure" playbook used in cloud services like Kubernetes, EKS, and AKS. The article highlights how each framework—whether from AWS, Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI—is designed to integrate tightly with its parent company's paid services. For example, AWS Strands is open-source but seamlessly integrates with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, a paid service. Similarly, Google ADK is optimized for Gemini and Vertex AI, while OpenAI's minimal SDK keeps users within the OpenAI API ecosystem. Independent frameworks like LangGraph and PydanticAI, though model-agnostic, still face the challenge of competing against these deeply integrated systems. The crux of the matter lies in understanding that these frameworks are not just tools but gateways to broader ecosystems. For developers and organizations, this means choosing a framework could inadvertently lock them into a specific vendor's stack. The implications for DevOps professionals are significant, as decisions about AI frameworks will influence long-term infrastructure costs, scalability, and flexibility. The battle for dominance in AI agent technology is less about features and more about controlling the future of AI deployment and usage.

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Originally published on The New Stack on 2/20/2026