This year’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in London, UK was all about bringing together adopters, industry leaders and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities to share knowledge, collaborate and explore innovations. From engaging keynote sessions to live AI demos, Rakuten Cloud made its presence felt across the four day event, showcasing its Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform, Rakuten Cloud-Native Orchestrator, and Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage — all under the theme Empowering the Kubernetes Edge for AI.
A key theme at this year's KubeCon was the growing momentum around edge AI workloads. At the heart of this is Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage (CNS) — our persistent, software-defined storage solution built to support stateful applications at the edge. Recognized for its innovation, it also powers Google Distributed Cloud connected servers, demonstrating its role in enabling resilient and scalable infrastructure for real-world AI use cases.
Rakuten Cloud team in action at KubeCon Europe 2025, London, UK
Memorable moments from KubeCon Europe 2025
Power of the Rakuten Brand. It was incredible to see that almost everyone we met had used a Rakuten service before. What stood out even more was how people from different regions recognized Rakuten for different businesses, services, and technologies — a familiarity that naturally sparked deeper conversations about how we’re enabling enterprise deployments with Google Cloud.
The remarkable Rakuten team. The team representing Rakuten Cloud on the ground — Anirban (Oni) Chakravartti, Padmarajan (Raj) Narayanan, Venkatesh Aravamudhan, Wayne McBean, Gyunesh Osmanov, and Dhruv Sood — brought the theme “Empowering the Kubernetes Edge for AI” to life through engaging discussions and live demonstrations.
Connecting with our Rakuten Cloud partners. It was amazing to meet our friends from Google Cloud, Nirmata, Intel Corporation, and others and hear more about how they are delivering solutions that enable enterprise use cases across retail, banking, manufacturing, entertainment & media, telecom and healthcare.
Rakuten Cloud leaders take centre stage. Oni Chakravartti joined Intel’s Open at AI podcast to talk about how AI is shaping the Kubernetes edge and the challenges we are solving for enterprise customers. Raj Narayanan also held a lightning talk during Data on Kubernetes Day on how a software defined storage approach is helping simplify and scale stateful workloads on Kubernetes.
Rakuten Mobile represent! A proud Rakuten Mobile user from Japan stopped by just to say how much he loved the service, calling it the most reliable and customer-friendly operator in Japan. That one stuck with us.
The future of cloud? A 10-year-old developer visited our booth to share how his passion to become a developer one day led him to complete certifications and win a school hackathon — which led his school to select him for a sponsored trip to KubeCon Europe.
The Rakuten Cloud team showcased its complete Kubernetes Edge for AI solution at the event (booth S763)
Rakuten Cloud team at Google Cloud and Nirmata booth at KubeCon Europe 2025, London, UK
Anirban Chakravartti at Intel’s podcast talking about AI's impact on the Kubernetes edge
A proud Rakuten Mobile user visited us at the booth
A big thanks to our customers, partners, organizers, and Rakuten team members for making this event a success. We look forward to continuing our journey together and driving innovation globally!
Until next time at KubeCon
KubeCon Europe 2025 was a testament to the power of collaboration and innovation. We're excited to continue driving AI-powered solutions and look forward to shaping the future of Kubernetes together with our customers, partners and community.
To learn more about our cloud-native products and schedule a demo, head over to cloud.rakuten.com
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