Broadcom Inc. VM API project enters CNCF Sandbox

Broadcom Inc. saw its VM API project accepted into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox, a step toward managing virtual machines through Kubernetes in a vendor-neutral way.

Virtual machines still form a major part of enterprise application estates, even as organizations standardize on Kubernetes as an infrastructure control plane. A 2026 Virtual Machines Report from the Linux Foundation found that VMs account for 53% of production applications across 492 surveyed practitioners, and most organizations expect that share to hold steady. Among organizations expanding their VM footprint, 34% cited AI and agentic workloads as a contributing factor.

VM API allows virtual machines to be provisioned and managed through Kubernetes APIs across multiple heterogeneous infrastructure providers. This lets VMs participate in the same declarative infrastructure model used for containerized workloads. Separately, Broadcom is co-chairing the newly formed Workload Conformance Working Group in the Kubernetes community, which aims to establish a shared standard for how workloads run on Kubernetes.

The VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) is a CNCF-certified Kubernetes runtime built into VMware Cloud Foundation, running directly on the hypervisor. More than 20 new partner solutions have been validated for VKS, spanning observability, security, data and AI, application delivery, and storage. Validated solutions include Datadog, Grafana Labs, New Relic, Splunk by Cisco, CrowdStrike Falcon, Canonical Apache Spark, Akuity Platform, KubeDB by AppsCode, Traefik Labs, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and Scality RING.

“For decades, VMware technology has set the standard for enterprise virtualization. Modern AI and agentic workflows now require VMs to operate within cloud-native ecosystems,” said Dilpreet Bindra, senior director of engineering, VMware Cloud Foundation Division, Broadcom.

Moving the project into CNCF stewardship opens the way to a community-driven API and operating model for VMs that can be implemented across multiple infrastructure providers.