AI Native Platforms Become the Next Foundation
AI native platforms are emerging as a core requirement for Platform Engineering 2.0. In episode two of The Platform Engineering Show, Alan Shimel speaks with Pankaj Gupta of Broadcom about why platform teams need to support AI workloads, AI agents and future autonomous operations as first-class concerns.
Gupta explains that Platform Engineering 2.0 builds on the pressures covered in episode one. AI-driven coding acceleration, agentic development, FinOps concerns, sovereignty requirements and multi-persona enterprise needs are all pushing existing platforms to evolve.
AI Workloads Need More Than Compute
The first requirement is native support for AI workloads. That includes GPU provisioning, model serving, model registries, MCP servers, machine learning pipelines and strong guardrails. These capabilities must be built into the platform, not treated as one-off add-ons.
AI native platforms also need to govern and protect AI workloads. As models and tooling change quickly, the platform must stay flexible. Teams need a foundation that can absorb new building blocks without forcing every developer or business unit to rebuild their process.
AI Agents Become Platform Citizens
The second major shift is support for AI agents. Gupta describes this as the first time non-human actors become platform citizens. Agents may write code, execute code, move through pipelines and perform bounded tasks that once belonged only to human developers.
That creates new requirements for access, approval and oversight. Some tasks may need a human in the loop. Others may require policy-based limits on what an agent can see or change. AI native platforms must provide those guardrails while still letting teams move faster.
Autonomous Platforms Remain the Long-Term Goal
The third pillar is the autonomous platform. Gupta describes self-healing, self-optimizing, self-scaling and self-securing platforms as the long-term goal. The immediate priority is more practical: make AI workloads and AI agents safe, governed and useful today.
For platform teams, the message is clear. Platform Engineering 2.0 is not just a traditional internal developer platform with AI added on top. It is a shift toward agentic development platforms that support both humans and AI systems with shared APIs, stronger controls and enterprise-grade governance.