Kubernetes has become the operating layer for AI. The infrastructure is ready — now the hard work begins. Join the community for a focused half-day event on building, governing, and scaling AI on cloud native platforms.
About the Event
For years, Kubernetes was where applications lived. In 2026, it's where AI production happens. The CNCF's own data shows 82% of container users running Kubernetes in production — and 66% of organizations already using it to manage generative AI inference workloads.
But adoption statistics are the easy part. The harder conversation is happening right now across the cloud native community: how do you actually build a reliable, sovereign, production-grade AI stack on open infrastructure? How do you close the gap between AI ambition and infrastructure reality?
Cloud Native: The AI Stack is a focused, half-day virtual event bringing together platform engineers, SREs, architects, and technical leaders to tackle the questions that matter for Q4 2026 and beyond — without the noise of a three-day conference.
"Kubernetes isn't just scaling applications — it's becoming the platform for intelligent systems."
CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey, 2026
Every session is grounded in real-world implementation — what's working, what isn't, and what the community is building to close the gaps.
No proprietary lock-in, no single-vendor pitch fests. The conversation centers on open standards, CNCF projects, and community-driven solutions.
Designed for working engineers and technical leaders who can't afford a full day away. Three and a half hours of focused, dense content with no filler.
Timed for Q4 planning cycles — the moment engineering and platform teams are setting infrastructure direction for the year ahead.
Why Attend
Platform engineers, SREs, DevOps practitioners, architects, and technical leaders working at the intersection of cloud native infrastructure and AI.
The CNCF's 2025 survey found a "profound gap between AI ambition and infrastructure reality." This event exists to bridge it — with real patterns from teams who've shipped.
From Dynamic Resource Allocation for GPUs to the Inference Gateway GA, Kubernetes has evolved fast for AI. Understand what's available and how to use it.
As organizations demand control over their AI infrastructure and data — across clouds, on-premises, and at the edge — open standards are the only viable path. Hear how teams are building for sovereign AI today.
Speakers from engineering teams, open source maintainers, and practitioners sharing what they've actually built — not roadmap promises or product demos.
No travel. No multi-day commitment. No badge-scanning. Just focused, high-quality content from 9 AM to 12:30 PM ET — and you're back to your work by lunch.
October is when engineering teams set infrastructure direction for the next year. Leave with clarity on which cloud native AI patterns to invest in — and which rabbit holes to avoid.
What We're Covering
Topics built from CNCF research, KubeCon session trends, and what engineering teams are actually working through in 2026.
The cloud native community in late 2026 is wrestling with one central question: the infrastructure is ready — so why is production AI still so hard?
The answers are emerging across GPU scheduling, inference routing, platform engineering maturity, digital sovereignty mandates, and the cultural challenge of aligning AI ambition with operational reality.
This half-day event traces those threads from the foundation up — from Kubernetes as the AI operating layer to the governance, security, and sovereignty patterns that make production AI sustainable at scale.
Dynamic Resource Allocation for GPUs, the Inference Gateway, multi-cluster AI orchestration — how Kubernetes has evolved beyond container orchestration to become the control plane for intelligent systems.
66% of organizations use Kubernetes for GenAI inference — but only 7% deploy models daily. What separates teams running AI in production from those still stuck in experimentation mode?
Golden paths for AI workloads, self-service GPU access, cost guardrails, and GitOps for model deployments. How platform teams are building the foundations that AI teams actually need.
From European cloud sovereignty mandates to enterprise data governance, organizations are demanding control over where their AI runs and who has access to their data. Open cloud native infrastructure is the answer.
Policy enforcement with OPA, workload identity with SPIFFE/SPIRE, software supply chain security for models, and zero-trust networking for inference services. Security isn't optional when AI is in production.
AI workloads demand a new observability vocabulary — time to first token, queue depth, cache hit rates, token throughput. How OpenTelemetry and Prometheus are evolving to support the AI operations layer.
The KubeCon NA 2026 "AI Inference + Agentic" track reflects where the community is heading. What does it take to run reliable, governed multi-agent systems on cloud native infrastructure?
The CNCF's 2025 survey named cultural change as the #1 adoption challenge — ahead of technology. How leading teams are aligning engineering, platform, and AI orgs around a shared infrastructure strategy.
Speakers
Our speakers come from the teams building cloud native AI infrastructure in production — open source maintainers, platform engineers, SREs, and architects who are working through these problems today.
We're bringing together practitioners who have shipped cloud native AI infrastructure in production — people who have dealt with GPU scheduling constraints, inference routing trade-offs, platform governance at scale, and the organizational dynamics of getting AI to actually run in production. Not keynote-circuit speakers. People who've done the work.
Interested in speaking? Get in touch.
Sponsors
Reach platform engineers, SREs, DevOps practitioners, and technical leaders actively evaluating cloud native AI infrastructure. Sponsorship details available upon request.
Platinum sponsors announced soon
Gold sponsors announced soon
Silver sponsors announced soon
Sponsorship inquiries: events@techstronggroup.com
Free Registration
Half a day. No travel. No cost. Just the cloud native AI conversations that matter for what you're building next.
October 2026 · 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM ET · Virtual · Free
