At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026, Pete Smails, SUSE's SVP and GM for cloud-native, sat down with The New Stack to discuss how the company is evolving from a traditional open source operating system provider into a unified platform for AI, containers, and virtual machines. Here are ten key insights into SUSE's strategic positioning for the AI era.
1. A Mission Redefined: Open Infrastructure for Modern Workloads
SUSE's current mission focuses on being an open infrastructure platform that supports modern workloads. While the operating system remains the foundation, the company has built a world-class, secure build system on top. This seemingly mundane plumbing is critical in today's CI/CD landscape, ensuring robustness and security as enterprises accelerate their AI initiatives.
2. The Operating System: Still the Bottoms-Up Foundation
Despite the shift toward higher-level abstractions, SUSE's operating system remains vital. It forms the base layer that ensures interoperability and security across diverse environments. The OS is designed to be lean yet enterprise-ready, providing the stability required for AI workloads that demand consistent performance and uptime.
3. A Build System That's Surprisingly Relevant
SUSE's build system, which Smails describes as boring but critical, ensures that every component is built securely and repetitively. In the age of continuous integration and delivery, this automated build pipeline eliminates manual errors and supply chain vulnerabilities. It's a foundational element for any organization deploying AI models in production.
4. Orchestration with SUSE Rancher Prime
At the orchestration layer sits SUSE Rancher Prime, a container management and Kubernetes orchestration platform. It enables teams to build and deploy cloud-native applications anywhere—on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. Rancher Prime is central to SUSE's promise of unifying diverse infrastructure under a single management plane.
5. The Technology Triumvirate: AI, Containers, and VMs
SUSE positions its platform as a triumvirate that unifies AI services, containers, and virtual machines. The rationale: the world is moving toward multiple data centers and multi-cloud architectures. Rather than assimilating these technologies, SUSE unifies them, allowing teams to capitalize on AI without sacrificing operational simplicity.
6. Unifying VM and Container Management
A key differentiator is the seamless integration of VM and container management. SUSE Virtualization provides a stable foundation for modernizing legacy infrastructure while still enabling container orchestration. This fusion reduces complexity for operators who must support both traditional and cloud-native applications side by side.
7. SUSE Virtualization: A Stable Foundation for Legacy Modernization
SUSE Virtualization acts as the bedrock for legacy workloads. It allows enterprises to run VMs alongside containers, with unified management via Rancher Prime. This approach ensures that existing investments are protected while new AI workloads are deployed on the same infrastructure, simplifying operations and reducing costs.
8. Introducing the Open Ecosystem for AI Agents
Recent enhancements to SUSE Rancher Prime include an open ecosystem for AI agents. These agents provide automated operational tools that help enterprises manage deployments, detect vulnerabilities, and optimize resources. The ecosystem is designed to be extensible, allowing third-party agents to integrate seamlessly.
9. Meet Liz: A Context-Aware AI Agent for Operations
At KubeCon, SUSE unveiled Liz, a context-aware AI agent integrated into Rancher Prime. Imagine Liz as a virtual teammate that scans your deployment environment for issues like CVEs, then suggests remediation steps. Users can interact with Liz via natural language, making operational tasks more intuitive and efficient.
10. The Path Forward: Open Source as an AI-Native Foundation
SUSE's commitment to open source principles underpins its AI-native strategy. By providing an open, enterprise-ready foundation, the company empowers organizations to build and innovate without vendor lock-in. The future lies in unified infrastructure that abstracts away complexity, letting teams focus on delivering AI-driven value.
SUSE's journey from an OS company to an AI-native infrastructure platform illustrates a broader industry trend: the convergence of virtualization, containers, and AI under a single open management umbrella. With tools like Rancher Prime, SUSE Virtualization, and the Liz AI agent, enterprises can modernize their infrastructure while preparing for the demands of the AI era.