Subaru Wins CNCF Award for Advancing AI with Cloud Native Infrastructure

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced Subaru, one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers, as the winner of the CNCF End User Case Study Contest for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan 2026.

Subaru received the award for transforming the AI infrastructure behind its next-generation EyeSight development platform. By combining Kubernetes with multiple CNCF technologies such as Envoy Gateway, Gateway API and MetalLB, the company dramatically improved developer productivity, infrastructure efficiency and machine learning (ML) reproducibility. By optimizing the delivery of large AI container images, adopting GitOps practices and automating end-to-end ML workflows, Subaru created a scalable cloud native platform that enables faster iteration on AI models while improving operational consistency.

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“As organizations build increasingly sophisticated AI applications, cloud native technologies provide the foundation for making those workloads scalable and operationally efficient,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, CNCF. “Subaru demonstrates how combining Kubernetes with projects like Argo, Envoy, Helm, Harbor and MetalLB can solve real world infrastructure challenges while accelerating AI innovation. It’s an excellent example of open source cloud native technologies delivering measurable business impact.”

Developing AI models for Subaru’s next-generation EyeSight required continuous cycles of data processing, model training, validation and inference. As those workloads grew in scale and complexity, Subaru’s existing on-premises GPU environment became a bottleneck. AI container images exceeding 30 GB routinely required hours to download before workloads could begin. Deployment processes relied on manually executed scripts rather than declarative configuration and complex machine learning pipelines lacked a unified orchestration framework. All made it difficult to achieve reproducible, efficient execution.

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“We wanted to build an AI development platform that removed operational friction and enabled our engineers to focus on improving model accuracy instead of managing infrastructure,” said Ryoji Kobayashi, DevOps engineer of ADAS development department, Subaru. “By embracing cloud native technologies and GitOps practices, we’ve significantly reduced development bottlenecks while creating a more reproducible, scalable platform for machine learning. The improvements we’ve achieved are helping us accelerate innovation for next-generation EyeSight.”

To address these challenges, Subaru built a cloud native AI platform on Kubernetes using multiple CNCF projects. By combining Envoy Gateway, Gateway API and MetalLB, the company significantly reduced pull times for large AI container images from approximately three hours to just three minutes; an impressive 60x improvement. Subaru also adopted a GitOps workflow with Argo CD and Helmfile, building on its existing Helm-based deployments to standardize application delivery and centrally manage application definitions. Argo Workflows automated the end-to-end machine learning pipeline, improving reproducibility and operational efficiency.

Subaru continues to expand its use of Kubernetes and CNCF technologies to advance its AI infrastructure. As AI workloads become more complex, the company plans to build on its cloud native foundation to further improve developer productivity, platform capabilities and operational efficiency.

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