Orkes

What Orkes does

Orkes provides a modern workflow orchestration platform for developers to scale distributed applications, modernize workflows for durability, and protect against software failures and downtimes. Built on the open-source Conductor project (originally from Netflix), Orkes Conductor offers enterprise-grade governance, security, observability, and operational reliability. It enables the combination of AI reasoning with deterministic execution, allowing organizations to build applications that blend adaptive decision-making with predictable, governed execution. Orkes Cloud offers fully managed and security-hardened clusters with full compatibility with Open Source Conductor, plus added enterprise features. The platform supports writing workflows as code, building task workers, integrating applications with open-source SDKs, and seamlessly weaving in Large Language Models, Prompt Templates, and Vector Database Integrations into business workflows. It also integrates and optimizes human actions into workflows.

Products

• Orkes CloudA fully managed and security-hardened cluster offering full compatibility with Open Source Conductor with added enterprise features. It provides managed hosting, a streamlined workflow UI, a workflow template explorer, and extensive built-in integrations.
• Orkes ConductorA workflow orchestration platform that allows engineering and product teams to build and scale distributed applications and agentic workflows with high levels of observability, security, and durability. It combines AI reasoning with deterministic execution and is built for critical operations.
• Developer PlaygroundA feature-rich sandbox for fast prototyping, including all Conductor OSS features, early access to new features, pre-built workflow templates, and community support. It's designed for individual developers to explore Orkes Conductor and test concepts.

Key capabilities

• Determinism, Durability, and Explainability for AI agents
• Combine AI reasoning with deterministic execution
• Decisions you can trust and understand
• Built for Critical Operations
• Open Source and Enterprise Ready
• Design workflows visually or in code
• Build AI agents with preferred models, tools, and frameworks
• Open and Extensible (Conductor Agent SDK, LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Google ADK, CrewAI)
• Composable by Design (agents and workflows invoke each other, sharing prompts, tools, models, forms, platform services)
• Durable execution (survives failures, restarts, long-running execution)
• Event-Driven Execution (scheduling, webhooks, API triggers)
• Human-in-the-Loop (approvals, reviews, escalations)
• Real-time Monitoring
• Explainability
• Analytics
• Access Control (fine-grained RBAC policies)
• Audit Logs
• Developer First by Design
• Powered by Open Source
• Simple APIs
• Visual Workflow Creation UI
• Scheduler
• Human Tasks
• Event Tasks
• Wait Tasks
• AI and LLM Tasks (LLMs, Prompt Templates, Vector Database Integrations)
• Webhooks
• One-Step Invoke
• Workflow Timeline View
• Task Retry
• Versioning
• Tags for organizing workflows
• Advanced Metrics Dashboard with alerting
• Infinitely Scalable
• High Performance Queuing
• Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Secrets Storage
• MCP Gateway (turn internal APIs into tools for agents and LLMs)
• Agentic Workflows (blend structured process stages with LLM driven decisions)
• Bring Your LLMs (integrate preferred LLMs and Vector DBs)
• Plug in Prompts (author custom prompts)
• Add Guardrails (enforce policies, validation, human approvals)
• Multi Agent Orchestration
• Build Workflows at the Speed of Thought (plain English description to starter workflow)
• SOC2 Type II compliant
• Custom Deployment options (Orkes Hosted, Customer Hosted, on-prem)
• Up to 99.99% availability SLA
• Choice of Cloud providers and regions (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Dedicated Conductor clusters
• Dedicated VPCs / VNETs
• Dedicated cloud accounts
• Privatelink connections to workloads
• VPC / VNET Peering
• Custom domains
• Cross region backups
• Cross region failover clusters
• Bring Your Own Keys
• Single Sign On
• Change Data Capture
• User Groups
• User Groups Sync with IdP
• External Application Identities
• End-to-end data encryption
• Open-source SDKs (Java, TypeScript, Python, Go, C#)
• CLI for Conductor
• Unit testing for Workflows
• Indexing via persistent queues
• Efficient & high performance indexing and archiving
• Improved persistence to reduce IO, network calls, compression
• Support for large forks (up to 60k parallel forks)
• High Availability
• Multi-Region support with auto-failover
• Managed Cloud Offerings
• Private cloud / data-center deployed enterprise grade clusters
• Enterprise support (customer success manager, technical architect, premium support)
• Enhanced UI with Workflow Creator

Use cases

• Scale distributed applications
• Modernize workflows for durability
• Protect against software failures and downtimes
• Build AI agents
• Combine adaptive decision-making with predictable, governed execution
• Long-lived, mission-critical operations at scale
• Event-driven automation
• Approvals, reviews, or escalations with human-in-the-loop
• Fast prototyping
• Build highly reliable applications at enterprise-scale
• Define and Execute workflows
• Run and Optimize workflows
• Observe and Scale workflows
• Collaborate and Govern workflows
• Execute workflows at a prescribed cadence (scheduling)
• Trigger events from workflows to interface with external systems (e.g., Kafka Topics)
• Durable execution with wait tasks
• Seamlessly weave in Large Language Models, Prompt Templates and Vector Database Integrations
• Asynchronously signal waiting workflows or start new workflow executions using webhooks
• Simplify execution process with one-step invoke
• Handle task failures by automatically retrying tasks
• Safely test changes with versioning (canary testing, A/B testing, rollback)
• Organize workflows, enhance searchability, and implement granular control with tags
• Gain insights into workflows and resolve bottlenecks with advanced metrics
• Scale with a limitless number of application workflows and executions
• Securely share workflows, tasks, secrets, AI prompts with granular access controls
• Turn internal APIs into tools for agents and LLMs
• Embed agentic behavior into durable, observable business workflows
• Coordinate multiple specialized agents in one workflow
• Meet humans where they are with built-in approvals, decision review, escalation, and audit trails
• Microservices Workflow Orchestration
• Realtime API Orchestration
• Event Driven Architecture
• Human Workflow Orchestration
• Process Orchestration
• Financial transaction reconciliation
• Video transcoding pipelines
• Cloud infrastructure automation
• Encoding pipelines
• Subscription management
• Multi-platform delivery
• Automate repetitive and manual tasks (file transfers, transcoding, quality checks)
• Network provisioning, configuration, and monitoring tasks
• Streamline service delivery and activation (order processing, validation, provisioning, testing)
• Revolutionize customer support (ticket routing, escalation, resolution)
• Approval workflows (document verification, mortgage approvals)
• AI assisted copilots
• Workforce process automation (employee onboarding, customer support)
• Data management in healthcare
• Clinical trials acceleration
• Patient records management
• Automated application bootstrapping
• Code review into a multi-agent pipeline
• Transforming notification architecture
• Order and warehouse management
• Reducing debugging time
• Streamlining FinTech Operations
• Asynchronous Post ETL Workflow Foundation
• Personalized artwork recommendations (Netflix)

AI approach

Orkes provides an orchestration platform for AI agents and workflows, enabling the combination of AI reasoning with deterministic execution. It allows users to build AI agents with Orkes Conductor or integrate existing agents from frameworks like LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, or Google ADK. The platform supports seamless integration of Large Language Models, Prompt Templates, and Vector Database Integrations into business workflows. It focuses on making AI-powered operations reliable, explainable, and durable, particularly for mission-critical applications.

Tech named: LLM, Large Language Models, Prompt Templates, Vector Database Integrations, AI Agents, LangGraph, OpenAI Agents SDK, Google ADK, CrewAI, Gemini, gemini-2.0-flash

Industries served

• Software Development
• Financial Services
• Media and Entertainment
• Telecommunications
• Healthcare
• e-Commerce
• Wholesale Mortgage Lending

What it says sets it apart

• Founded by ex-Netflix Engineers, original creators of Netflix Conductor OSS
• Built on the open source Conductor project, extended with enterprise-grade features
• Trusted Platform for Production AI
• Operating System for AI Agents and Workflows
• Combines AI reasoning with deterministic execution for reliability
• Provides transparency and explainability for AI-powered operations
• Durability built into every execution for mission-critical operations
• Composable by Design: agents and workflows invoke each other, sharing resources
• Comprehensive observability and governance features (real-time monitoring, analytics, RBAC, audit logs)
• Developer-first design with simple APIs and open-source SDKs in multiple languages
• Offers fully managed cloud service (Orkes Cloud) with enterprise features
• Flexible deployment options: Orkes Hosted, Customer Hosted, or on-premise across AWS, Azure, GCP
• High availability (up to 99.99% SLA) and multi-region support with auto-failover
• Infinitely scalable to handle billions of workflows and high task throughput
• Advanced security features: SOC2 Type II compliance, end-to-end data encryption, secrets storage, private connectivity
• Unique ability to enable agentic orchestration, coordinating multiple AI agents within complex workflows
• Addresses the 'Agent Execution Gap' by making agent-driven systems reliable in production
• Built-in retries, timeouts, human-in-the-loop steps, and full tracing for agentic workflows
• Supports building workflows from plain English descriptions
• Optimized for individual developers with Developer Playground for prototyping
• Enhanced UI with Visual Workflow Creator for increased developer velocity
• Internal optimizations for high volume workloads and lower infrastructure TCO
• Ability to scale workloads with less downtime and increased output with a high task throughput rate (1000+ tasks/second vs ~100 for OSS Conductor)

Funding rounds we track

From the AI funding tracker — rounds as reported by the linked publications.