Inside KubeCon 2025: How Arm and its CNCF partners are transforming the way the world builds cloud-native systems 

KubeCon brings together the builders shaping the next decade of open-source infrastructure. This year, one theme stands out: efficiency at scale. As AI workloads flood data centers and edge environments alike, the pressure is on to optimize performance without compromising sustainability. 

At the heart of this shift is the CPU — the backbone of cloud-native computing. At KubeCon 2025, Arm is showcasing how the Arm Neoverse platform is delivering industry-leading scalable efficiency and performance-per-watt, enabling organizations to handle the most demanding workloads — from AI and DevOps to traditional compute. 

Whether you are modernizing legacy systems or building next generation AI services, Arm provides the foundation to scale smarter, faster, and more sustainably. 

Google Cloud and Arm: Powering the new Axion N4A VMs 

One of the biggest developments at KubeCon comes from Google Cloud: the launch of the new Google Axion-powered N4A (VMs), built on the Neoverse platform. 

These new VMs mark a breakthrough in efficiency and scalability. By leveraging Arm’s robust software ecosystem and close collaboration with Google, the N4A series delivers major gains in performance-per-watt, cost efficiency, and multi-architecture flexibility — ideal for AI inference, DevOps, and general-purpose workloads. 

This announcement not only strengthens the partnership between Arm and Google Cloud, but also signals a broader industry move toward energy-efficient compute at hyperscale. 

Hands-on with Kubernetes and AI on Google Cloud 

Developers at today’s KubeCon’s Day 0 Hands-On Workshop experience this shift first-hand. Participants can deploy and optimize AI workloads on Google’s Arm-based Axion CPUs using Kubernetes — exploring how to build scalable, multi-architecture cloud-native applications that balance power and performance. 

The session guides developers through: 

• Running large language models (LLMs) efficiently on Arm. 

• Migrating cloud-native apps seamlessly between architectures. 

• Optimizing container orchestration for AI pipelines. 

Innovation doesn’t require more hardware — it requires smarter architectures. Arm and Google Cloud are making that a reality. 

Developers can visit the Arm booth at KubeCon to see Kubernetes and AI workloads running live on Google Cloud Axion, and get hands-on demos of Neoverse performance tools, container security solutions, and cloud-to-edge orchestration. 

Arm and CNCF: Building an open, efficient cloud 

KubeCon 2025 is the culmination of Arm collaborations across the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) that drives new open standards in performance and portability to enable seamless cloud-native innovation. 

From secure container management to intelligent autoscaling, the Arm architecture is enabling developers to build cloud-native systems that are as efficient as they are powerful. 

Recent milestones include: 

• Arm’s collaboration with Harbor, the trusted open-source container registry, ensures that organizations can securely store, manage, and deploy container images on Arm-based infrastructure. With Harbor’s built-in vulnerability scanning, access control, and multi-cloud replication, developers can now run secure, cost-efficient workloads across Arm-powered Kubernetes and Docker environments. 

• Running the Open Policy Agent (OPA) for unified governance on Arm-based systems to allow enterprises to unify policy logic across edge and cloud environments, while improving security, compliance, and performance per watt. OPA enables centralized, consistent policy enforcement across Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and APIs. 

• Arm and Kedify working together to help teams scale intelligently, with Kedify leveraging Arm’s efficient compute architecture to deliver dynamic autoscaling for cloud-native workloads. This improves resource utilization and lowers operational costs. To see these benefits in action and how real-time upscaling can optimize infrastructure, Kedify will be demonstrating its autoscaling engine live during its upcoming Code-A-Long workshop.

• AuthZed migrating its full authorization stack — from CI/CD to production — onto Arm-based infrastructure, achieving lower latency, higher scalability, and reduced infrastructure cost. This transition empowers faster, more secure access control for customers like OpenAI and Turo, showcasing the tangible benefits of Arm’s ecosystem across the stack. 

• Arm partnering with Octopus Deploy to help enterprises automate software delivery across both x86 and Arm-based servers — including AWS Graviton, Azure Arm VMs, and Google Axion instances. This leads to faster deployment, stronger governance, and a reduction in total cost of ownership. 

These collaborations illustrate Arm’s vision for a trusted, energy-efficient software supply chain; one that extends seamlessly from hyperscale cloud to the intelligent edge. By aligning with CNCF projects and open-source communities, Arm is enabling developers, DevOps engineers, and operators to build with confidence, knowing their infrastructure is efficient, secure, and future-ready. 

See the future of cloud efficiency

KubeCon is where the next generation of infrastructure takes shape — and this year, Arm is helping define it. Arm and its partners are transforming how the world builds cloud-native systems: open, sustainable, and efficient by design.  
 
Want to learn more about supported software? Visit the Arm booth at Kubecon and check out the Arm Cloud Migration Program.  
 
Want to help shape the future of cloud efficiency? Join the Arm Developer Program to access upcoming workshops, code-alongs, and community projects, and gain the expertise you need to build more efficiently on Arm.