AI agents are operating autonomously inside your software vendors. Here’s why that changes how you think about source code security.

AI agents are no longer just writing code suggestions. They are executing tasks, modifying files, interacting with APIs, and making decisions inside software vendor infrastructure with limited human oversight. That shift is already underway in 2025, and it is changing what it means to depend on a third-party software vendor.

The risk this creates is not primarily financial. A vendor can be solvent, well-funded, and actively maintained, and still experience an AI-driven operational incident that corrupts or makes inaccessible the source code your organisation depends on. That is a different kind of vendor risk, and it makes the case for keeping source code secured independently considerably stronger.

AI agents now operate inside your vendor’s infrastructure

According to Gartner, 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI by 2028. That shift is already underway. AI coding agents don’t just suggest code; they write, modify, execute, and deploy it autonomously. They operate across codebases, interact with APIs, and take action without step-by-step human approval.

As security researchers at Apiiro noted in 2025, agentic AI introduces continuous code execution paths that operate outside traditional development and review workflows. The risk isn’t a developer making a bad commit. It’s an agent with broad permissions acting on an interpretation of instructions that may not match the intended outcome.

What this means for how vendor risk is assessed

The conventional view of software vendor risk focuses on financial stability: will this company still be operating in three years? That question still matters. But AI-driven operational risk adds a different dimension.

A vendor can be financially healthy, well-staffed, and actively supported, and still experience an incident that corrupts, removes, or makes inaccessible the source code underpinning a critical product. An AI agent acting on misunderstood instructions. A compromised credential giving an agent unintended scope. A deployment pipeline that executes something it shouldn’t.

These aren’t theoretical scenarios. They’re documented, and they’re becoming more frequent as agentic AI use accelerates across the software industry.

Independent escrow means your copy isn’t inside that blast radius

Software escrow holds a verified copy of source code and documentation with an independent third party, outside the vendor’s own infrastructure. If a vendor’s environment becomes unavailable for any reason, including an AI-related incident, the independently held copy remains intact and accessible under the agreed release conditions.

Escrow doesn’t prevent incidents. It ensures that when the vendor’s internal systems are compromised, degraded, or simply unavailable, the source code you depend on is not subject to the same risk. Your copy lives somewhere the AI agent can’t reach.

Set it up before the incident, not after

The nature of agentic AI risk is that it is fast and often irreversible. Autonomous systems can act on a misinterpretation in seconds, with consequences that take far longer to recover from. The window between normal operations and a critical loss of availability is compressing.

Escrow365 lets software vendors and enterprise buyers put an independently secured, verified copy of source code in place in 30 minutes. Self-service. No legal resource required. The arrangement is active and auditable from day one.

The right time to secure independent access to your source code is before it becomes urgent.

Sources: Apiiro, “Top code execution risks in agentic AI systems”, November 3, 2025. Gartner, forecast on agentic AI enterprise adoption, 2025.