Broadcom and Canonical expand partnership to optimize VMware Cloud Foundation for modern container and AI workloads

Collaboration combines the leading cloud OS with the industry’s first unified private cloud platform to accelerate cloud native innovation

[LAS VEGAS] August 26, 2025—Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) and Canonical today announced an expanded collaboration to help customers ship modern container-based and AI applications faster and more securely. By bringing together Canonical’s trusted open-source software with VMware Cloud Foundation, the industry’s first unified private cloud platform, this partnership will help customers accelerate innovation, with lower costs and less risk.

“Broadcom has delivered VCF as the industry’s first unified private cloud platform for modern private clouds. Canonical is the trusted leader in open-source innovation and the publisher of Ubuntu, the number one Cloud OS,”  said Paul Turner, vice president of products, VMware Cloud Foundation Division at Broadcom. “Together, our partnership will help customers that are building Kubernetes-based modern applications improve developer efficiency, manage security risks, and simplify AI workload deployment.”

“Canonical is partnering with Broadcom to address a long-standing question from customers: innovate or stay secure?” said Regis Paquette, SVP global sales alliances, channels and industry verticals at Canonical. “Now, by bringing enterprise-grade Ubuntu and chiseled Ubuntu containers to the VCF platform, organizations can both innovate at speed and get the reliable security maintenance they need to drive the next wave of enterprise and AI innovation.”  

Customers building Kubernetes-based modern applications often face challenges in improving developer efficiency, managing security risks from oversized container images, and simplifying AI workload deployment, especially in air-gapped environments that struggle with external GPU driver dependencies.  VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) provides a unified cloud experience to deploy modern containerized apps using vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS). This expanded partnership will provide customers with:

• VMware Cloud Foundation + Ubuntu Pro with Enterprise Support: Customers will benefit from enterprise-grade support across the complete stack including Ubuntu OS and Kubernetes-based containers integrated into VCF. This will include expedited security patch management with a robust process to review, prioritize, and fix critical vulnerabilities.

• Better Security and Efficiency with Chiseled Containers: By standardizing on chiseled Ubuntu containers for popular language runtimes such as Python, .NET and Go, enterprise developers will experience faster development-to-production cycles. These lighter container images consume significantly less storage space, leading to optimized resource consumption and accelerated network transfer times when pulling or pushing images to and from registries. Chiseled Ubuntu containers minimize the attack surface by removing unnecessary content from the container. 

• Faster AI Deployments with GPU Drivers: Ubuntu images with precompiled virtualized GPU drivers enable customers to achieve simplified deployment and more secure operations even in air-gapped environments, significantly reducing their dependency on external repositories and Internet access. This not only streamlines the development process but also leads to optimal performance, as deployment time and resource consumption are notably reduced by removing the need for on-node driver compilation and sharing of valuable GPU hardware. Elimination of on-node driver compilation optimizes performance and reduces time and resource consumption during deployment.

Additional Resources

• Learn more about VMware Cloud Foundation
• Learn more about containers from Canonical

About Broadcom

Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a global technology leader that designs, develops, and supplies a broad range of semiconductor, enterprise software and security solutions. Broadcom’s category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including cloud, data center, networking, broadband, wireless, storage, industrial, and enterprise software. Broadcom solutions include service provider and enterprise networking and storage, mobile device and broadband connectivity, mainframe, cybersecurity, and private and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Broadcom is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

About Canonical

Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides open source security, support and services. Our portfolio covers critical systems, from the smallest devices to the largest clouds, from the kernel to containers, from databases to AI. With customers that include top tech brands, emerging startups, governments and home users, Canonical delivers trusted open source for everyone. Learn more at canonical.com