SONiC Foundation adds Lenovo, NADDOD and NEXAI as General Members
The SONiC Foundation, which hosts the open source network operating system SONiC under the Linux Foundation, has added Lenovo, NADDOD and Zhanwang (NEXAI) as General Members. According to the foundation, the three companies bring expertise in networking silicon, hardware platforms and high-speed interconnects to the community.
- Lenovo, NADDOD and Zhanwang (NEXAI) have joined the SONiC Foundation as General Members.
- The foundation hosts the open source network operating system SONiC under the Linux Foundation.
- The companies plan upstream contributions in areas such as RoCE, SAI, telemetry, SRv6 and AI network observability.
- The OCP Global Summit 2026 runs Oct. 12-15 in San Jose, with a SONiC booth and workshops on Oct. 14 and Oct. 16.
What the new members bring
The Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) Foundation announced the additions on Oct. 5, 2026. It says the move reflects continued industry investment in SONiC as AI, high-performance computing (HPC), cloud and data center environments place new demands on network performance, scalability and interoperability.
According to the foundation, AI and HPC infrastructure are driving greater requirements for network bandwidth, latency, reliability and observability. Operators also increasingly need the flexibility to build infrastructure across a broad ecosystem of networking technologies. The new members cover networking silicon, hardware platforms, high-speed interconnects, enterprise technology and large-scale infrastructure deployments.
Arpit Joshipura, general manager of networking, edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation, said: "AI infrastructure is raising the bar for networking." He added that the participation of the new members "will help advance an open, collaborative networking ecosystem that can evolve alongside the rapidly changing requirements of AI, cloud and data center infrastructure."
Planned contributions from each company
The foundation describes different focus areas for each of the three companies:
- Lenovo is building SONiC-based automation and AI-driven operations capabilities, focusing on components including Redis, SAI, telemetry, BGP EVPN and RoCE. It plans to contribute deployment experience and platform enhancements back to the community as its capabilities mature.
- NADDOD uses SONiC across its AI data center switch portfolio. It plans to contribute platform and SAI enhancements, interoperability testing, reference architectures and insights from real-world deployments.
- NEXAI is actively porting SONiC to its networking products. It plans upstream contributions spanning RDMA and RoCE, Priority Flow Control, SRv6, telemetry and AI network observability.
The foundation says these contributions will help SONiC meet the needs of large-scale data center environments.
In supporting quotes, Billy Chen of Lenovo's ISG in China said the company is partnering with the SONiC community to foster open innovation and is working on what it calls a "Token-Driven Network". NADDOD CTO Chang Liu said the company links hardware enablement, interoperability validation and RoCE optimization with the demands of AI infrastructure. Jeff Zhang, Senior Director of Technical Marketing at NEXAI, called joining SONiC "a key milestone" for the company and said NEXAI looks forward to contributing its expertise in high-performance switch silicon.
SONiC at OCP Global Summit 2026
The announcement came ahead of the 2026 OCP Global Summit, which takes place Oct. 12-15 in San Jose. The SONiC community plans a series of Foundation-led activities there:
- A SONiC Foundation booth with live demonstrations throughout the summit
- A co-located SONiC Workshop on Oct. 14
- An extended offsite SONiC Workshop on Oct. 16, hosted by SONiC Premier Member Nokia at its Sunnyvale office
The foundation describes SONiC as an open source network operating system originally developed for hyperscale cloud environments. It says SONiC now powers production networks across cloud providers, enterprises, telecommunications providers and AI infrastructure worldwide. Its open, vendor-neutral architecture lets organizations deploy and manage network infrastructure across multiple hardware platforms while avoiding vendor lock-in, according to the foundation.
What it means for the AI networking market
For operators building AI and HPC networks, the new memberships signal that more hardware and infrastructure vendors are building on SONiC and plan to feed their work back upstream. The stated contribution areas, including RoCE, RDMA, telemetry and observability, line up with the bandwidth, latency and reliability demands the foundation highlights. Whether and when those contributions land will depend on each company's plans, which the announcement describes only in general terms.
