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of AI agents will autonomously interact with external systems by 2028, creating complex
cross-vendor cost webs
- The full Hype Cycle™ diagram: Where every platform engineering technology sits today, from embryonic to mainstream
- The 2026 Priority Matrix: Which innovations have transformational vs. high vs. moderate business impact
- AI gateway evaluation criteria: What to look for when selecting an AI gateway for your platform stack
Not every use case requires the most advanced (and expensive) model. Choosing the right model for each task is one of the fastest ways to achieve AI cost reduction while maintaining performance.
Without proper monitoring, AI usage can grow unchecked. Teams need visibility into token usage, cost per request, and model performance to make informed decisions.
A new category of infrastructure—AI gateways—is emerging to address this challenge. These systems act as a control layer, enabling organizations to route requests to the most cost-efficient models, enforce usage policies, and optimize performance in real time.
In our view, Gartner specifically highlights this category as critical to cost optimization and names TrueFoundry as a vendor offering AI gateway tools in the space, which we feel is signaling strong enterprise adoption of this architectural pattern.
Beyond infrastructure, there’s also a human factor. Developers and end users often lack awareness of how their usage patterns impact costs. Educating teams on efficient prompting, model selection, and responsible usage is becoming a critical part of AI cost management.
As AI agents move from experiment to enterprise, the organizations that scale successfully won't be the ones with the most models, they'll be the ones with the best platforms underneath them.
The Hype Cycle™ for Platform Engineering, 2026 makes this clear. According to the report, 81% of software engineering leaders say platform engineering drives moderate-to-high value in automating security and compliance workflows. AI-native development, agent governance, and cost management are no longer roadmap items, they're table stakes.
The report identifies AI Gateways as a key emerging technology for managing security, observability, and cost across AI workloads. It also rates AI Agent Management Platforms as transformational, the highest priority designation in Gartner's matrix.
Download the full report to understand which platform engineering investments will define AI-ready organizations in 2026 and beyond.
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TrueFoundry is the AI Gateway platform of choice for leading enterprises and Fortune 500 companies. 96% of reviewers are likely to recommend TrueFoundry and our users have rated us 4.9 for ease of deployment, administration, and maintenance.