VMware Explore Wrap-Up: 10 Huge AI, AMD, Agentic Security And Innovation Launches

Here are 10 of the biggest launches from VMware Explore this week around AI, agentic security and software, as well as new integrations with AMD, Google, Kyndryl, Rackspace and Nvidia.

VMware by Broadcom unleashed a slew of new AI, agentic security and open-source software for VMware Cloud Foundation, Tanzu, vDefend and more at VMware Explore 2026 this week.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based software superstar also formed new technology partnerships and AI model integrations with AMD, Google, Nvidia, Rackspace Technology, Kyndryl, MetalSoft and others aiming to make VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) the best cloud platform in the AI era.

VMware Explore 2026 began on Aug. 31 in Las Vegas and concluded Thursday with thousands of partners, developers and customers in attendance.

CRN breaks down 10 of the biggest launches at VMware Explore that every partner and customer needs to know about.

VMware Launches New AI Factory At Explore

VMware by Broadcom launched its new AI Factory that combines VMware Cloud Foundation with customers’ preferred AI software and accelerator architectures and certified VCF AI ReadyNodes from hardware providers.

“Enterprises want to run AI where their data lives, but the journey from metal to model is slow, complex and expensive,” said Paul Turner, chief product officer for VCF, in an email to CRN. “VMware AI Factory changes that.”

Turner said AI Factory gives customers a software-defined foundation that automates infrastructure deployment, unifies life-cycle management, and lets them choose their preferred hardware and vetted models.

“The result is faster time to first model, predictable private cloud costs and better control over AI tokenomics,” he said.

VMware AI Factory streamlines AI infrastructure management by fully automating hardware provisioning, software stack enablement and end-to-end life-cycle management.

As part of VMware AI Factory, private AI services help make AI operational, governable and cost-effective. VCF pools and shares GPU resources across the organization so teams can run multiple models on shared hardware instead of dedicating infrastructure to each workload.

Enterprises can pivot to new models while keeping costs low through shared infrastructure and governed models-as-a-service.

VMware AI Factory combines VCF with Dell PowerEdge servers and VCF AI ReadyNodes from Cisco, Lenovo, Supermicro and others.

Click through to read about the nine other new products and news from VMware Explore.

VMware’s New AgentMinder For Agentic Security

On the security front, one of the biggest launches is VMware by Broadcom’s new AgentMinder that serves as the central control plane for autonomous AI agents.

As AI agents move from generating content to accessing data, invoking tools and completing business processes, clients need more than model guardrails or static permissions. AgentMinder independently verifies agent identity and authorizes each action against its declared mission, intent, context and current risk before the action reaches an enterprise resource.

Clayton Donley, vice president and general manager for Broadcom’s Identity Management Security Division, said existing security models were designed for human users, not for autonomous digital employees that can make decisions and take actions on their own.

“AgentMinder acts as a traffic controller, verifying exactly what these AI agents are doing, providing guardrails and tracking their work. It helps businesses stop worrying about AI running unchecked and start running their operations with confidence,” Donley said.

VMware said by establishing policy-based controls, continuous authorization and telemetry, AgentMinder helps enterprises scale agentic AI while maintaining security, compliance and operational trust.

New Partnership With AMD And MetalSoft To Drive AI Factory

To further streamline VCF AI Factory deployment, Broadcom formed a new partnership with MetalSoft to deliver integrated heterogeneous bare metal automation for VCF that drops bare-metal provisioning time from weeks to minutes.

MetalSoft provides an intelligent orchestration platform that transforms fragmented on-premises hardware into high-performance, secure and workload-compliant infrastructure.

The MetalSoft integration will help IT provision or repave physical servers from multiple vendors directly through the VCF management console, unifying the software and hardware life cycle into a single operational model and eliminating the need for vendor-specific tools for hardware and firmware management.

In addition, Broadcom and AMD are collaborating to deliver a VMware AI Factory that pairs VCF with AMD Instinct GPUs and the open AMD ROCm software ecosystem.

Zero-touch provisioning will orchestrate the end-to-end deployment of the entire stack, from vSphere and vSAN through Kubernetes and the AMD GPU operator, while AMD’s DVX driver can attach GPUs to large VMs consumed by a VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service cluster.

VMware Revamps Tanzu Platform

VMware launched new AI-ready data foundations for the VMware Tanzu Platform, the company’s agent platform.

Key new capabilities introduced in the VMware Tanzu Platform include hardened agent sandboxes, which enforces a “deny-by-default” security containment model that isolates credentials, helping to prevent prompt injection attacks and unauthorized network access.

Another new feature is a developer harness that accelerates build times with preapproved skills, step-by-step workflow build packs, human-in-the-loop controls and integrated memory services.

VMware also launched a new curated marketplace for Tanzu that operates a centralized catalog where developers and agents can safely discover and connect to vetted AI models, tools and data products.

Lastly, VMware’s new auditable agent governance for Tanzu integrates an AI gateway to monitor, rate-limit and log every action an agent takes for strict compliance and auditing.

VMware said boosting Tanzu will provide an end-to-end framework enabling enterprises to transition safely from initial AI pilots to fully production-ready AI agents inside their own secure private clouds.

New Google, Nvidia And More AI Models On VMware Cloud Foundation

VMware has validated popular AI models from Google, Nvidia, NEC, Alibaba Cloud and Z.ai on VCF for the first time.

The five new AI models for VCF include:

Google DeepMind’s latest open-source, open-weight Gemma 4 model—purpose-built for developers and the research community for bringing local execution and enabling enterprises to build and deploy autonomous AI agents.

Nvidia Nemotron 3 family of open, multimodal models that help agents complete tasks faster. Combining hybrid Mamba-Transformer MoE architecture, 1 million context and multi-environment reinforcement learning, Nemotron 3 enables scalable, long-running agentic workflows across enterprise applications.

NEC’s proprietary cotomi AI model optimized for Japanese language, trained on curated, highly reliable datasets.

Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-27B is an open-weight dense vision-language model from Qwen. It is suited for coding, professional workflows, research, multimodal interaction and long-running agent tasks, with flexible thinking that can be enabled or disabled.

Z.ai’s open-source General Language Model GLM 5.2, which enables enterprises to deploy coding and reasoning agents locally for multistep autonomous workflows with data sovereignty and optimal hardware performance.

vDefend New Agentic Enactments

VMware vDefend is a software-defined security solution built into the hypervisor to protect traffic against ransomware, malware and AI threats within VCF.

At Explore, VMware extended vDefend’s ZeroTrust lateral security to agentic AI workloads by launching a new discovery of agentic AI components that automatically identifies MCP servers, LLMs, datastores and tools by continuously monitoring traffic flows across VCF.

In addition, vDefend received new shadow AI monitoring technology that can detect unauthorized AI usage and enforce strict zero-trust policies to help maintain complete control over enterprise environments.

Lastly, vDefend will now use an agentic AI pipeline to create Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDPS) signatures to provide distributed virtual patching to protect workloads against AI-discovered vulnerabilities.

Rackspace Cloud On VCF

VMware teamed with Rackspace to launch Rackspace Cloud, a multitenant cloud platform powered by Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.

The offering aims to simplify VMware operations, speed up deployments, and reduce the need to buy hardware, capacity and maintain data center infrastructure. Rackspace Cloud provides customers with cloud capabilities, such as Kubernetes and containerized applications, while also maintaining their VMware environment.

Key capabilities include elastic consumption on prestaged infrastructure, integrated support for virtual machines and Kubernetes workloads on a single platform, and enterprise-grade isolation, security and governance controls.

The platform is delivered with transparent life-cycle management, multiple performance tiers, and 24x7x365 managed operations.

"Together, we are helping enterprises scale their modern private clouds cost-effectively, operate securely and innovate rapidly,” said Broadcom’s Ricky Cooper, vice president of Global Cloud Service Providers, in a statement.

VMware Avi Load Balancer Enhancements

VMware Avi Load Balancer is a software-defined application delivery controller and security platform integrated inside VCF.

At Explore, VMware launched new features to broaden its protection of agentic AI workloads, including tool and agent misuse prevention technology. This Avi Load Balancer enhancement will restrict agents from accessing unauthorized MCP tools and inspect transaction content to block malicious execution, including remote code execution (RCE) and file injection.

Avi Load Balancer also has new zero-day attack detection features that will establish normal agentic traffic baselines across agents, LLMs and tools to flag and isolate anomalous behavior in real time.

Lastly, new sensitive data protection technology helps prevent unauthorized exfiltration of credentials, personally identifiable information and sensitive financial data.

TrueSource By Broadcom

TrueSource by Broadcom is a new portfolio of commercially supported open-source software that brings together several existing and new innovations including Spring Enterprise, the company’s flagship offering for the open-source Spring ecosystem.

Broadcom designed the new offerings to help enterprises manage mission-critical Java applications, meet compliance standards and defend against advanced AI-enabled cyber threats.

TrueSource by Broadcom also includes new TrueSource Trusted Artifacts, which provides secure clean-room builds of the broader Java ecosystem, Python and Node.js and incorporates a secure catalog of hardened container images.

Lastly, the offering includes TrueSource Data Services, a new offering that provides trusted artifacts, support and deployment expertise for PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, MySQL and Valkey data engines. Data Services also includes deployment automation for these engines as well as visibility into the security and operational posture.

Spring Enterprise, TrueSource Trusted Artifacts, and TrueSource Data Services are all available with tiered site licensing options.

VMware Teams With Kyndryl; Thousands Of Kyndryl Employees To Boost Skills

Kyndryl and VMware are doubling down on each other with an expanded strategic alliance to provide end-to-end consulting services for VCF.

Kyndryl and Broadcom are investing in the skills development of several thousand certified Kyndryl consultants, architects and delivery specialists to enable agentic workflows.

“Against the backdrop of rising sovereignty demands, enterprises are rationalizing their hybrid and private cloud environments, and they require a pragmatic, outcome-driven approach,” said Giovanni Carraro, Kyndryl’s Global Strategic Alliances leader, in an email to CRN.

“By expanding our partnership with Broadcom and investing in VCF skills, we will help customers build modern, resilient, private clouds that enable AI adoption, support data modernization, address the risk of AI-identified vulnerabilities and deliver real business value,” he said.

Combining the VCF private cloud capabilities with Kyndryl’s managed services unlocks the value of VCF, enhanced through industrialized operations, automation and AIOps-driven delivery.

Kyndryl will provide VCF and VMware Tanzu solutions across advisory and strategy, architecture and design, upgrade and modernization and secure Day-2 operations.