Recognized for pioneering cloud native scalability and shaping the future of open source services

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, London, UK – April 3, 2025 — The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced Ant Group has been awarded the CNCF Top End User Award. Twice a year, CNCF honors outstanding contributions from its End User members who actively drive innovation and collaboration within the cloud native ecosystem. This week at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, Ant Group will be recognized during a dedicated awards ceremony, celebrating its leadership in advancing open source technologies and scalable cloud infrastructure.

“We are honored to recognize Ant Group as our Top End User Award winner for 2025,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of CNCF. “By leveraging open collaboration and pioneering advanced cloud native architectures with open source projects like Dragonfly, they have set new standards for scalability, security, and efficiency—contributing significantly to the global cloud native ecosystem.”

Since becoming a CNCF End User Member in 2019, Ant Group has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to advancing cloud native technologies. Over the past five years as a Gold End User Member, the company has consistently contributed to the CNCF ecosystem, earning recognition as one of its top end user contributors—currently ranked fourth of all time and third in the past year. Ant Group has played a crucial role in shaping the cloud native landscape. Through active contributions and collaborations, the company has fostered innovation by making its technologies accessible to customers and partners worldwide. By leveraging Kubernetes, service mesh, serverless, and container technologies, Ant Group has advanced the efficiency and scalability of the modern service industry, setting new standards for reliability and performance of digital technologies.

Ant Group’s adoption of cloud native technologies has not only strengthened its own ability to scale and innovate, but has also encouraged a broader movement among enterprises to embrace modern infrastructure solutions. By leading the way in cloud native adoption, Ant Group is not only driving technological progress, but fostered a deeper industry-wide collaboration. The company has successfully scaled Kubernetes to 15,000 nodes using all upstream components, demonstrating its expertise and ability to push the boundaries of cloud native infrastructure.

“Open source is one of the core technology strategies of Ant Group. Receiving this recognition from CNCF is a testament to the dedication and innovation of our team,” said Richard Sikang Bian, Head of Open Source at Ant Group. “By embracing cloud native technologies, we have built a more agile, efficient, and resilient infrastructure that supports millions of users worldwide. This award highlights our commitment to open source collaboration, as well as, the broader impact of these technologies in shaping the future of digital financial services.”

Ant Group has been an early and key contributor to the CNCF ecosystem, with early contributions to Kubernetes and containerd, and later with their donation of Dragonfly, one of the first advanced OCI image distribution accelerator for larger clusters, in 2018, becoming the 30th project to enter the CNCF and one of the first to be donated from an End User Company.

Following that, they have continued to be an active contributor with the donation of KCL, a constraint-based policy language, in 2023 and KusionStack, an intent-driven Platform Orchestrator for developing Internal Development Platforms in 2024.

Demonstrating its commitment to knowledge sharing, Ant Group has actively engaged with the cloud native community by organizing Kubernetes Community Days (KCD), local meetups, and presenting insightful talks at KubeCon events. These initiatives have provided valuable guidance for organizations looking to scale their cloud native operations effectively.

Ant Group is one of more than 150 organizations in the CNCF End User Community, which meets regularly to share adoption best practices and feedback on project roadmaps and future projects for CNCF technical leaders to consider.

Additional Resources

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by more than 800 members, including the world’s largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

Media Contact

Kaitlin Thornhill

The Linux Foundation

pr@cncf.io