F5, a global leader in application delivery and security, recently announced an expanded collaboration with Red Hat to help enterprises securely and effectively deploy AI applications. This partnership aims to address critical challenges in AI adoption, such as secure model serving, scalable data movement, and real-time inference, thereby facilitating the deployment of practical, high-value AI use cases like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). AI adoption is rapidly gaining traction, with 96% of organizations now deploying AI models, up from just 25% in 2023, according to F5’s 2025 State of Application Strategy Report. The report further notes that 72% of respondents are leveraging AI to optimize application performance, while 59% focus on cost optimization and security enhancements. F5 and Red Hat’s collaboration is set to provide the necessary tools and platforms to meet these growing demands. The collaboration centers on integrating F5’s Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) with Red Hat OpenShift AI, a modular, open-source platform designed for building and deploying AI applications across hybrid environments. This integration ensures that enterprises can deploy AI with confidence, speed, and control, without being locked into a single cloud or toolset. The combination of F5’s robust security and observability features with Red Hat’s flexible and scalable AI architecture is expected to significantly enhance the deployment and management of AI models. At the Red Hat Summit 2025 (May 19–22 in Boston), F5 and its partners will showcase real-world AI use cases, such as secure model serving and RAG workloads, built on Red Hat OpenShift AI. The summit will highlight how these integrated solutions can address performance, security, and observability needs, enabling organizations to operationalize AI more effectively. Industry insiders have positively evaluated this collaboration. According to Joe Fernandes, Vice President and General Manager, AI Business Unit, at Red Hat, "As AI becomes core to how businesses operate and compete, organizations need platforms that offer flexibility without compromising security. Red Hat OpenShift AI, combined with F5’s security and observability, provides the necessary tools to build and scale AI applications confidently and anywhere." F5’s commitment to innovation and partnership is evident in its extensive experience in delivering and securing applications. With over three decades of expertise, F5 has developed ADSP, a premier platform for managing and protecting apps and APIs across various environments. By collaborating with Red Hat, F5 is positioning itself as a key player in the AI landscape, offering solutions that align with the evolving needs of enterprises. Simultaneously, Microsoft and Hugging Face, a prominent player in the open-source AI model space, have announced an expanded collaboration to make thousands of open-source models easily accessible and deployable on Azure. At the Microsoft Build conference, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, highlighted this partnership, which significantly enhances the availability and usability of Hugging Face models on Azure's secure infrastructure. The collaboration introduces a collection of over 10,000 Hugging Face models to Azure AI Foundry, making it easier for developers to deploy and manage these models. The models cover a wide range of tasks, including text generation, feature extraction, translation, sentence similarity identification, image classification, image segmentation, text-to-image generation, image-to-text conversion, automatic speech recognition, and audio classification. This diverse array of models empowers Azure customers to build a variety of AI applications and agents while maintaining full control over their technology and data. To ensure enterprise readiness, the Hugging Face Collection on Azure AI Foundry only features models that are compatible with the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK) and have been validated and maintained for security and performance. Microsoft and Hugging Face will also continuously test and patch inference containers for vulnerabilities, ensuring that the models remain robust and reliable. The deployment process is streamlined, allowing users to select a model from the Hugging Face Collection in Azure AI Foundry and deploy it with just a few clicks. For those who prefer to browse models on the Hugging Face Hub, the "Deploy on Azure ML" option directs them to the deployment settings within Azure AI Machine Learning Studio. This integration not only simplifies the deployment process but also ensures that models can be deployed securely alongside private data. Clement Delangue, CEO and co-founder of Hugging Face, emphasized the importance of this partnership: "We’re enabling companies to take control of their AI destiny, deploying the best open models securely within their Azure account, to build AI applications they can trust and verify." Asha Sharma, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, added, "Open source is how AI moves faster—with transparency, choice, and community at its core. This collaboration represents our commitment to that momentum, combining Hugging Face’s vibrant model ecosystem with Azure’s secure, enterprise-grade infrastructure." Looking ahead, Microsoft and Hugging Face plan to roll out additional updates to further enrich the Hugging Face Collection on Azure AI Foundry. These updates will include more models, modalities, and enhanced features to support a wider range of AI applications. Azure customers can now leverage a vast and diverse array of open-source models to accelerate their AI initiatives and innovate safely and at scale. Both collaborations—F5 with Red Hat and Microsoft with Hugging Face—highlight the growing importance of open-source solutions and the increasing demand for secure, scalable, and performant AI infrastructure. These partnerships are seen as pivotal in helping enterprises navigate the complex and rapidly evolving AI landscape, providing them with the tools and platforms they need to succeed.