Innovation is the primary driving force behind development. As an important part of the regional innovation system and the core supporting carrier for the accumulation of innovative resources, innovation platforms are the main way to promote innovation-driven development. This study took the urban agglomerations of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River Basin as the research area and used the nearest neighbor index, kernel density estimation, Ripley's K function, and geo-detector to explore the spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of the innovation platforms above provincial level in the urban agglomerations in 2017. The results show that: 1) The overall spatial distribution of the innovation platforms in the urban agglomerations is clustered, showing a triangular distribution pattern with Wuhan, Changsha, and Nanchang as the cores. 2) Innovation platforms of various scales and functional types exhibit significant agglomeration characteristics, but there exist certain differences in agglomeration intensity and state among them. 3) The overall innovation platforms and various types of innovation platforms show scale effect, which first strengthens and then weakens with the change of geographical distance. 4) The spatial differentiation of the innovation platforms is the result of multiple factors. Strength of financial resources, degree of informationalization, level of foreign investment, and conditions of human capital are most significant, followed by traffic accessibility, urbanization level, economic base, and innovation atmosphere.