Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Chris Wright has stated that artificial intelligence (AI) technology is more grounded and promising than other emerging technologies like cryptocurrencies or non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Wright drew parallels between the current AI hype cycle and the early days of cloud technology, noting that while some elements of the AI hype may not fully materialize, the technology is likely to have a significant impact on businesses.
“A better analogue would be all of the hype we saw, maybe 15 years ago, for this new technology called cloud,” Wright said during a media roundtable at the Red Hat Summit 2025. “And cloud ultimately has had a massive impact on businesses. In the early days, the sense was that the impact would hit us within a year, but the journeys were much longer. For a very disruptive and critical technology, it may take a little longer.”
Red Hat, which began as an infrastructure provider for businesses, plans to continue playing a similar role in the AI era, according to Matt Hicks, the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “In the old days, it meant being able to boot a server and provide a stable base for applications to be built,” Hicks explained. “In the AI world, there is not so much booting, but enabling any GPU (graphics processing unit) or any accelerator and then allowing any model to run on top of it.”
The company will focus on enabling companies to build with choice and flexibility, Hicks added. This approach aligns with Red Hat’s history of providing open-source solutions to enterprises as a subsidiary of IBM.
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