Retool debuts survey of 300 CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and announces its reimagined platform, applying security, compliance, and data connectivity at the platform layer
Retool, the governed platform where AI development is fast for builders and safe for the business, trusted by over 10,000 organizations, announced that teams can now build with any AI coding tool and deploy directly to production with enterprise governance enforced automatically. In addition, the company announced availability of its new app builder, as well as the release of a new survey of 300 C-suite executives on the state of governance and generative AI in the enterprise.
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“AI is transforming how software gets built, but it hasn’t solved how software gets governed and shipped, and that gap is exactly where enterprises get exposed,” said David Hsu, CEO and founder of Retool. “Retool gives teams the freedom to build with any AI tool they want, with the assurance that everything they deploy meets the security and compliance standards their business actually requires.”
AI code generators, vibe-coding tools and autonomous coding agents have made it possible for developers and non-developers alike to produce working prototypes in minutes. But none of those tools are accountable for that software when it runs. They don’t have a comprehensive data permission model, a vetted and secure resource access layer, or detailed audit logs. When an AI-generated app touches production data, the governance risk lands entirely on the enterprise. IT departments are faced with the problem of securing a mountain of code, both seen and increasingly hidden in the form of shadow AI. In fact, Retool’s survey found that 93% of respondents (CIO, CTOs, CISOS and equivalents) are concerned about vibe-coded tools running in production and 38% call it a top operational risk.
“We want teams to be able to build responsibly without creating new risk,” said Iraklis Pappas, Global Head of AI, Colgate-Palmolive. “The challenge is not just speed; it is making sure the right governance, permissions, and auditability are built into how AI-enabled applications move into production. Platforms that make governed building easier are important for enterprises like ours.”
Build from anywhere. Ship in Retool.
Security in Retool lives underneath the app. Permissions are attached to data sources and enforced by the platform universally, whether an app was built in Retool’s new AI-native builder, created with Lovable, Replit, Cursor or Codex, Kiro, generated by Claude Code via MCP, imported from an existing React codebase, or assembled from a Figma file. The platform handles governance automatically, from the moment anything lands in Retool. Those apps immediately inherit the organization’s existing permissions, audit trails, and resource-level policies, the same ones that apply to every other app running on Retool.
Retool’s build-anywhere platform extends application-layer governance across ecosystem partners like Snowflake, helping customers ensure governance remains consistent as applications move into production, regardless of how or where they were built.
“Through our partnership, we see firsthand how fast enterprises are building AI-powered apps—and how quickly the governance question follows. By combining Retool’s capabilities with Snowflake, we are designing a path for customers to turn conversational prompts into production-ready applications at lightning speed and with complete peace of mind,” said Unmesh Jagtap, Director of Product at Snowflake.
The state of enterprise AI governance
Executed by third-party insights and market research firm Wynter, Retool’s survey of 307 CTOs, CISOs, and CIOs found a number of striking insights. They include:
- Everyone is worried about vibe-coded apps running in production: 93% are concerned; 38% are very concerned, calling it a top operational risk.
- Enterprises are largely blind to AI-caused incidents: 59% could not confirm whether they’ve had an AI-caused production incident, and only 19% could definitively say they haven’t had an incident because of monitoring they have in place. 22% indicated they’d had at least one incident.
- No one’s getting governance right: Only 8% of respondents described their org’s governance as “strong.” The majority describe governance as requiring mostly functional but requiring “significant manual effort” (40%), “uneven across teams” (37%), or “reactive” (10%).
- Visibility is the #1 problem hiding in plain sight: Only 5% are “very confident” they have full visibility into all production internal tools. Nearly half (43%) are “not very confident” or “not at all confident.” Another 52% acknowledge they have gaps but can’t fully quantify them; effectively ~95% of leaders acknowledge at least some gaps in visibility.
- Business pressure to enable AI building is accelerating: 90% of respondents say pressure from their business has increased in the past 12 months—31% say tolerance for friction is “near zero.”
A respondent had this to say about their top concern: “Ownership decay. When anyone can ship a tool in an afternoon, nobody signs up to maintain it. AI failures are silent—confident output that’s quietly wrong—so rot stays invisible until something breaks.” Another remarked: “I think we are in the Wild West of AI—as a CISO I am worried about moving fast and secure and govern later.”
The news follows a series of notable developments for Retool. It announced new integrations with Snowflake as part of the Snowflake Apps ecosystem and signed a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate enterprise app generation and artificial intelligence.
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