SUSE and NVIDIA partner to expand sovereign AI ecosystem

Enterprise open-source vendor SUSE has partnered with NVIDIA to enhance its AI Factory ecosystem, focusing on sovereign AI capabilities. By integrating the NVIDIA OpenShell Reference Architecture into the SUSE AI Factory, organizations can deploy private enterprise AI within their own environments. This approach aims to reduce reliance on public AI services, allowing companies to run AI agents locally to protect sensitive data and intellectual property while providing more predictable costs compared to per-token API models.

As part of the collaboration, SUSE introduced SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for NVIDIA, enabling customers to run AI workloads directly on NVIDIA hardware with a support model covering the operating system, GPU drivers, and Kubernetes environments.

Additionally, SUSE launched a two-tier independent software vendor (ISV) certification program for its AI Factory offerings. The program includes a ‘Ready for’ certification for partner self-validation and a ‘Certified for’ designation for jointly validated deployments. These initiatives are designed to assist enterprises and government departments, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, in standardizing and de-risking complex AI infrastructure stacks in alignment with regulatory requirements like the SOCI Act.