Solo.io has won the “Most Likely to Succeed” award at VB Transform 2025’s Innovation Showcase, where the billion-dollar cloud-native application networking company announced Kagent Studio, a framework for building and managing AI agents in Kubernetes environments. The recognition validates enterprise interest in Solo.io’s platform engineering solutions, particularly as companies increasingly adopt AI-driven automation within their cloud infrastructure.
What you should know: Kagent Studio is the first cloud-native framework specifically designed for DevOps and platform engineers to build, secure, run and manage AI agents in Kubernetes.
- The framework integrates natively with VSCode (a popular code editor) and provides real-time incident response capabilities, automated root cause analysis, and live infrastructure monitoring.
- It enables bilateral communication between workplace platforms like Slack and Teams and the integrated development environment (IDE), which is the software where engineers write and test code.
- The tool has already gained significant traction with 1,000-plus contributors, 1,100-plus GitHub stars, and users running it in production.
How it works: The framework operates as a native VSCode extension that streamlines core platform engineering workflows, particularly incident response.
- When a PagerDuty alert (a notification about system problems) appears in the IDE, engineers can acknowledge it and AI agents running locally will immediately begin diagnosing the issue.
- “All of this is live right in front of the engineer. So you’re seeing the actual charts and the logs and the status of the core pods or infrastructure under which you’re running, and you’re getting all that live and the human in the loop the whole time,” explained Keith Babo, Solo.io’s chief product officer.
- The system allows engineers to instruct whether to move forward, enabling human-AI collaboration in issue resolution.
The big picture: Solo.io positions Kagent Studio as an essential engineering tool comparable to Salesforce’s CRM for sales teams.
- CEO and founder Idit Levine said the framework “connects context and communication across platforms and platform engineering subteams.”
- The company, founded in 2017, raised $135 million in Series C funding in 2021 and is valued at $1 billion.
- Solo.io’s core business provides tools for connecting, securing and observing modern applications built on Kubernetes and microservices.
What they’re saying: Industry leaders emphasized the framework’s practical impact on platform engineering workflows.
- “It’s the first framework of its kind that targets this audience that’s building and running on Kubernetes for agents,” Babo said. “We wanted to make sure that we could bring that directly into the tools that platform engineers are using on a day-to-day basis.”
- Levine described winning the award as “great validation for us” and indicative of enterprise interest in their offering.
What’s next: Kagent Studio is currently in a closed preview phase, with users able to request access through the company’s Discord server.
- The Innovation Showcase featured presentations to industry decision-makers and feedback from venture capital judges including Emily Zhao from Salesforce Ventures, Matt Kraning from Menlo Ventures, and Rebecca Li from Amex Ventures.
- Other winners included CTGT and Catio, with finalists including Kumo, Superduper.io, Sutro and Qdrant.
Recent Stories
DOE fusion roadmap targets 2030s commercial deployment as AI drives $9B investment
The Department of Energy has released a new roadmap targeting commercial-scale fusion power deployment by the mid-2030s, though the plan lacks specific funding commitments and relies on scientific breakthroughs that have eluded researchers for decades. The strategy emphasizes public-private partnerships and positions AI as both a research tool and motivation for developing fusion energy to meet data centers' growing electricity demands. The big picture: The DOE's roadmap aims to "deliver the public infrastructure that supports the fusion private sector scale up in the 2030s," but acknowledges it cannot commit to specific funding levels and remains subject to Congressional appropriations. Why...
Oct 17, 2025Tying it all together: Credo’s purple cables power the $4B AI data center boom
Credo, a Silicon Valley semiconductor company specializing in data center cables and chips, has seen its stock price more than double this year to $143.61, following a 245% surge in 2024. The company's signature purple cables, which cost between $300-$500 each, have become essential infrastructure for AI data centers, positioning Credo to capitalize on the trillion-dollar AI infrastructure expansion as hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI rapidly build out massive computing facilities. What you should know: Credo's active electrical cables (AECs) are becoming indispensable for connecting the massive GPU clusters required for AI training and inference. The company...
Oct 17, 2025Vatican launches Latin American AI network for human development
The Vatican hosted a two-day conference bringing together 50 global experts to explore how artificial intelligence can advance peace, social justice, and human development. The event launched the Latin American AI Network for Integral Human Development and established principles for ethical AI governance that prioritize human dignity over technological advancement. What you should know: The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Vatican's research body for social issues, organized the "Digital Rerum Novarum" conference on October 16-17, combining academic research with practical AI applications. Participants included leading experts from MIT, Microsoft, Columbia University, the UN, and major European institutions. The conference...