Press release. Red Hat and NVIDIA have announced a historic expansion of their collaboration to align enterprise open source technologies with the rapid evolution of enterprise AI and advancements in rack-scale AI. As the industry moves beyond individual servers toward high-density, unified systems, Red Hat aims to provide the starting point for this transformation with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA, a specialized edition of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, optimized for the NVIDIA Rubin platform and tuned to drive future production on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI.
“NVIDIA’s architectural advancements have made AI an imperative, demonstrating that the computing stack will define the future of the industry”says Matt Hicks, president and CEO of Red Hat. “To address these important changes at launch, Red Hat and NVIDIA aim to offer Day 0 support for the latest NVIDIA architectures across all Red Hat hybrid cloud and AI portfolios. Together, we are driving the next generation of enterprise AI thanks to the power of open source ».
As 2026 approaches, many organizations are preparing to migrate AI from experimentation to production, with hierarchical strategies and centralized AI tools that incorporate AI agents and other advances. However, this transition requires a stable, high-performance and more secure infrastructure stack, from the underlying architecture to the software running on top of it.
The NVIDIA Rubin platform, with the new NVIDIA Vera CPU and advanced NVIDIA Rubin GPUs, is designed to provide a giant leap in intelligence for agentic AI and advanced reasoning. By optimizing its hybrid cloud portfolio for NVIDIA advancements, starting with Day 0 support for this new platform, Red Hat intends to empower organizations to scale their AI initiatives with greater confidence, with enterprise reliability and a consistent operating model across the hybrid cloud.
Red Hat and NVIDIA: The foundation for giga-scale AI factories
The NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform introduces transformative innovations, including the Vera CPU, the most energy-efficient CPU for giga-scale AI factories, the BlueField-4 data processor, and the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale solution. Red Hat announces its intention to provide Day 0 support for the NVIDIA Rubin platform across the Red Hat AI portfolio, including:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux It acts as a bridge between this advanced hardware and the complex software ecosystems required for modern AI. As a foundational element of Red Hat’s robust portfolio of hybrid cloud solutions, including Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI, Red Hat Enterprise Linux will introduce support for NVIDIA Confidential Computing across the entire AI lifecycle, offering enhanced security features for GPU, memory, and model data, as well as providing organizations with cryptographic proof that their most sensitive AI workloads maintain comprehensive protections.
- Red Hat OpenShift offers NVIDIA Rubin platform customers immediate access to the industry-leading enterprise hybrid cloud platform based on Kubernetes. To automate the deployment, configuration, and lifecycle management of accelerated computing, Red Hat OpenShift adds support for NVIDIA infrastructure software and NVIDIA CUDA X libraries, delivering optimized performance for a wide range of accelerated workloads. Additionally, support for NVIDIA BlueField provides enhanced networking, advanced cluster management, and better resource utilization through a more consistent enterprise operating experience.
- Red Hat AIRed Hat’s production-ready enterprise AI platform, will include new integrations with NVIDIA, expanding support for distributed inference with NVIDIA’s open source models in Red Hat AI Inference Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI, and Red Hat OpenShift AI. This includes joint efforts by Red Hat and NVIDIA to expand support beyond the NVIDIA Nemotron family to other NVIDIA open models, including those aimed at computer vision, robotics, and specific vertical areas.
Red Hat and NVIDIA: Innovations in AI
Red Hat is introducing Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIAa new edition of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform that incorporates the latest NVIDIA platform advancements since launch. In collaboration with NVIDIA, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA will offer feature support for the latest NVIDIA architectures on day 0 of availability, starting with the NVIDIA Rubin platform.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA remains fully aligned with the major version of the operating system. As Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA enhancements come to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, customers will be able to easily transition to traditional Red Hat Enterprise Linux based on their specific production needs, with confidence that production systems will maintain expected performance levels and application compatibility.
With this new approach, Red Hat and NVIDIA offer customers an enterprise-grade Linux platform, ready for release and fully compatible with the latest innovations in rack-scale AI. This includes:
- Validated interoperability: Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a validated operating system for the latest NVIDIA accelerators. This helps ensure that hardware and software resources work seamlessly to reduce friction in deployment.
- Optimized driver management– Organizations can access validated NVIDIA GPU OpenRM drivers and the CUDA toolkit through the Red Hat Enterprise Linux repositories, simplifying AI infrastructure lifecycle management.
- Improved safety posture: Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a reinforced foundation with features like SELinux and proactive vulnerability management, essential for protecting sensitive data in AI training and inference environments.
- Hybrid cloud consistency– Whether on-premises, at the edge or in the public cloud, Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers a unified platform for NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure, reducing infrastructure silos and lowering total cost of ownership.
- Supporting the industry’s largest commercial open source ecosystem: Red Hat Enterprise Linux is supported by a broad ecosystem of software, hardware, and cloud vendors, enabling greater freedom of choice and deeper capabilities in hybrid cloud environments.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux support for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform will coincide with general availability in the second half of 2026. Customers will be able to access the latest drivers and integration tools through the Red Hat Customer Portal.
More information about Red Hat’s collaboration with NVIDIA.
