Broadcom makes VMware Private AI standard in Cloud Foundation 9.0

Broadcom has announced that VMware Private AI Services will become a standard component of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, making it an AI native platform for private cloud infrastructure.

According to Broadcom, nine of the top ten Fortune 500 companies have now committed to adopting VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). The company stated that customers worldwide have licensed over 100 million cores of VCF, as organisations seek unified platforms to support artificial intelligence (AI) and traditional workloads within a secure, modern private cloud environment.

The new VCF 9.0 release is designed to provide a single, AI-native platform that organisations can use to manage both their AI and non-AI workloads at scale. With VMware Private AI Services now included as standard, customers can access capabilities for secure and governed deployment of AI services without an additional purchase.

Krish Prasad, Senior Vice President and General Manager, VMware Cloud Foundation Division at Broadcom, commented on the developments:

"It's undeniable that customers are resetting their cloud strategies and building out their private clouds to support better developer velocity with IT control, and more cost-efficient AI deployments. To support the next wave of AI innovation, Broadcom is making Private AI a standard part of the modern private cloud. With VMware Cloud Foundation, infrastructure and cloud operators get the cost and operational benefits of virtualisation for AI workloads without sacrificing performance. Developers get access to native AI services delivered directly from the private cloud platform for a frictionless experience."

VCF 9.0 includes several native AI services such as GPU Monitoring, Model Store, Model Runtime, Agent Builder, Vector Database, and Data Indexing/Retrieval. These services are intended to enhance user privacy and security, streamline infrastructure management, and simplify the deployment of AI models. Broadcom expects VMware Private AI Services entitlement for VCF 9.0 to be available as part of customer subscriptions from the company's first financial quarter of 2026.

AI advancements

Broadcom has detailed plans for forthcoming AI-focused enhancements to VCF, which will be accessible to customers in future updates. These include:

• Intelligent Assist for VCF: An AI-driven assistant designed to help diagnose and resolve issues efficiently by leveraging Broadcom's knowledge base. This is currently in technical preview and will be available for both on-premises and cloud-hosted language models.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) Support: This feature aims to provide standardised integration between AI services and a range of internal and external tools, such as databases and collaboration platforms, without the need for custom connectors.
• Multi-accelerator Model Runtime: This will enable organisations to deploy AI models on various GPUs, including those from AMD and NVIDIA, without requiring refactoring of their applications.
• Multi-tenant Models-as-a-Service: This feature focuses on total cost of ownership (TCO) and energy savings by facilitating secure model sharing across tenants while maintaining strict data isolation.

Partnerships and hardware integration

Broadcom is continuing to collaborate with hardware partners to expand the ecosystem that supports AI workloads on VCF. The company highlighted collaborations with both NVIDIA and AMD.

The integration with NVIDIA will bring support for NVIDIA GPUs, networking, and AI software into VMware Cloud Foundation. VCF will offer compatibility with the latest NVIDIA Blackwell accelerated computing solutions, including the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition and B200 GPUs, as well as NVIDIA's ConnectX-7 and BlueField-3 400G data processing units, featuring enhanced input/output capabilities. These efforts build on the companies' ongoing development of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA.

Broadcom also announced a partnership with AMD, allowing organisations to use AMD ROCm Enterprise AI software and Instinct MI350 Series GPUs on VCF. This will enable enterprises to fine-tune large language models, implement retrieval-augmented generation workflows, and conduct inference tasks on-premises, addressing requirements for privacy, cost, performance, and regulatory compliance within the data centre environment.

Developer productivity

Updates to VCF are designed to enable development teams to focus on application delivery while IT maintains oversight and governance. The vSphere Kubernetes Service within VCF provides access to enterprise Kubernetes deployments, leveraging GitOps for consistent, code-based infrastructure and application management.

The introduction of a native vSAN S3 Object Store provides an S3-compatible interface for storing and retrieving unstructured data directly on vSAN infrastructure, eliminating the need for proprietary hardware or third-party licensing. This enables unified storage policies, multi-tenant self-service access for developers, and increased visibility and control for IT teams.

Additional enhancements include embedded support for GitOps and Argo CD for automating Kubernetes-based deployments, as well as the integration of Istio Service Mesh for zero-trust networking, detailed application observability, and multi-cluster management from a single interface. An expanded partnership with Canonical was also outlined, designed to help customers deploy container-based and AI applications more efficiently and securely.

Customer perspectives

Organisations across various sectors report benefits from adopting VMware Cloud Foundation to meet their private cloud requirements.

Nicole Chesmore, Assistant Vice President, IT Security and Infrastructure Services at Grinnell Mutual, said: "VMware Cloud Foundation is transforming Grinnell Mutual's private cloud infrastructure, driving enhanced agility, efficiency and security across our operations. With VCF, we're bringing together our traditionally separate Network, Systems, DevOps, DBA, and Desktop Automation teams together on a unified private cloud platform. This fosters new levels of collaboration that has allowed our small team to innovate faster and deliver exceptional business value."

Adam Little, Director of IT Operations at New Belgium Brewing Company, commented: "VMware software has played a critical role in helping New Belgium drive cost efficiencies and support business continuity through hyperconverged infrastructure. We are now evolving to a modern private cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation. With the integrated and unified VCF 9.0 platform, we will be able to significantly improve our IT operations. VCF's built-in security capabilities will help make us secure and compliant by default from the moment we deploy."