VMware Cracks -> VMware Explore 2026 Update

VMware Explore 2026 runs this week in Las Vegas. As every year, a lot of new and exciting announcements came out. So here a summary of my personal highlights.

• All VMware Explore Session published can be found on https://www.vmware.com/explore/video/search
• VMware Explore 2026 Media Kit is here https://www.broadcom.com/company/news/resources/media-kits/vmware-explore-2026-las-vegas
• Sessions Recordings & Presentations are here https://github.com/lamw/vmware-explore-2026-session-urls
• Virtually Speaking Podcast Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_k3uUCO39tAfMY__4iE8bIZg7wfO7SN

Note: No time to go through all of the keynote? ->> jump to the RED sections

VMware Explore 2026 Keynote ->> https://www.vmware.com/explore/video/6403823199112 (Session ID PLE1837LV)

• 0:00:00 – 0:01:00 Intro & welcome
• 0:01:00 – 0:14:05 President Infrastructure Software Group (ISG) – Ram Velaga – high level message, enterprises to combine Public and private cloud while VMware is leading with technology – “..there is a place for cloud and there is a place for onpremis workloads…” . AI is everywhere – this is a platform play for VCF
• 0:14:05 – 0:15:00 Quick view in customers
• 0:15:00 – 0:32:30 Chief Product Officer – Paul Turner “… Innovation is the heart of VMware…”,”… delivering on the private AI cloud based on VCF…”
  • 0:17:00 – 0:17:35 Talking on cost factors
  • 0:17:35 – 0:17:50 VCF 9.x adoption at production scale, >2000 customer deployments, >19M allocated cores globally
  • 0:17:50 – 0:18:20 VCF 9.x customers with success
  • 0:18:20 – 0:19:15 Tools that make your VCF deployment easier -> https://go-vmware.broadcom.com/vmware-explore-hub-2026
    • Frontier AI Security Readiness Program https://go-vmware.broadcom.com/frontier-ai-security-readiness-program
    • Private Cloud Modernization Program https://go-vmware.broadcom.com/private-cloud-modernization
    • VCF Upgrade Planner https://vmware.github.io/vcf-upgrade-planner
    • VMware Cloud Foundation Adoption Path https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/vmware-cloud-foundation/adoption-path
  • 0:19:15 – 0:23:50 VCF Operations -> Simplified operations with AI Assistant in VCF (DEMO)
  • 0:23:50 – 0:24:50 Container Service, vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS), VM Service all in VCF
  • 0:24:50 – 0:26:15 Tokenomics – token costs are real.
  • 0:26:15 – 0:29:40 Announcing VMware Private AI Cloud – addressed cost, security and Agentic AI
  • 0:29:40 – 0:30:40 Announcing VMware AI Factory – one platform, from metal to model – https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/09/03/explore-2026-vmware-ai-factory-and-other-new-ai-innovations-in-vcf/
  • 0:30:40 – 0:32:10 Your LLM, your Infrastructure. Google Gemma, NVIDIA Nemotron, Alibaba Qwen, Helpcode GLM 5.2, NEX Cotomi and more than 150 models available via Hugging face repositories ready to run on VMware VCF
  • 0:32:10 – 0:32:40 NVIDIA – lastest VCF support for NVIDIA B300, NVIDIA Grace CPU (tech preview), NVIDIA ConnectX-7 Adapter
• 0:32:40 – 0:39:40 Chief Technologist – Sabina Anja DEMO of VMware Private AI Cloud in full flow 🙂 (recommended)
• 0:39:40 – 0:40:20 Wrap-up by Paul Turner
• 0:40:20 – 0:43:30 Security in AI Private Cloud , Distributed Firewall, lateral threat defense, virtual patching (recommended)
• 0:43:30 – 0:50:00 Global Field CTO – Chris McCain – talk about security DEMO (recommended)
• 0:50:00 – 0:51:15 Voice of the customer: New Belgium Brewery using a secure privat cloud based on VCF
• 0:51:15 – 1:07:10 Vice President and General Manager, Tanzu Division – Purnima Padmanabhan – talk about protecting workloads and applications. Announcement of “TrueSource” and “AgentMinder” (recommended)
• 1:07:10 Wrapt up and closure by Paul Turner

Recap Explore

• Day 1 https://blogs.vmware.com/explore/vmware-explore-2026-las-vegas-recap/
• Day 2 https://blogs.vmware.com/explore/vmware-explore-2026-las-vegas-recap-day2/
• Day 3 – https://blogs.vmware.com/explore/vmware-explore-2026-las-vegas-recap-day3/
• Day 4 – stay tuned

Major announcements

Blogs (all: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/tag/vmware-explore-2026/)

• At VMware Explore 2026: Future-Proofing Enterprise AI with a Flexible Model Strategy
• Closing the Gap Between Hardware and Cloud
• Introducing the Frontier AI Security Readiness Program
• Deploy VCF on Supermicro HGX Servers with NVIDIA GPUs for AI Workloads
• VMware Cloud Foundation Achieves NVIDIA Certification: AI Workloads Validated to Operate at Near Bare Metal Performance

Press Releases (all: https://news.broadcom.com/releases)

• Broadcom Introduces VMware Private AI Cloud, Enabling Enterprises to Scale AI Cost-Effectively, Operate More Securely, and Innovate Rapidly
• Broadcom Announces VMware AI Factory, Enabling Faster Time to Production AI and Greater Control Over AI Tokenomics
• VMware Cloud Foundation Brings Leading AI Models to the Private AI Cloud
• Broadcom Strengthens Spring Security and Adds Coverage of Java, Python, and Node.js Ecosystems with TrueSource
• Broadcom Unveils AI-Ready Data Foundations in VMware Tanzu Platform to Power Secure Enterprise AI Cloud
• Broadcom Delivers End-to-End Security, Identity, and Observability for Agentic AI
• Broadcom Unveils AgentMinder, An Enterprise Solution for AI Agent Governance and Runtime Control
• VMware Cloud Foundation Brings Leading AI Models to the Private AI Cloud
• Broadcom Announces VMware AI Factory, Enabling Faster Time to Production AI and Greater Control Over AI Tokenomics
• Broadcom Introduces VMware Private AI Cloud, Enabling Enterprises to Scale AI Cost-Effectively, Operate More Securely, and Innovate Rapidly

Looking forward having interesting conversations with you on our business topics where VMware might be a solution for. 

Cheers

Dudi