Why Capital One built its multi-agent AI platform around open-weight models

Presented by Capital One At VB Transform 2026, Kel Vanee, MVP of machine learning engineering at Capital One, spoke with Sam Witteveen, Senior Technology Contributor at VentureBeat, about how the bank built a scalable multi-agent AI architecture around deeply customized open-weight models rather than relying on an off-the-shelf foundation model. "At Capital One, we're not just using AI, we're building AI," Vanee said.The groundwork was laid years ago with Capital One's early investments in data transformation and cloud adoption, which Vanee said were foundational to moving quickly when the current wave of AI arrived. That technical foundation enabled the company to make several deliberate architectural decisions, including building a centralized, enterprise-wide AI platform with built-in g