New innovations empower organizations to reduce hyperscaler dependency and build a portable, cloud-neutral foundation for sovereign AI success

WILLMINGTON, Del., March 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — EnterpriseDB (EDB), the leading sovereign AI and data company, highlighted the community release of CloudNativePG 1.29, the latest milestone for the leading open-source Postgres® operator for Kubernetes. As the creator and primary contributor to the project, EDB is concurrently previewing an exclusive enterprise-grade data protection solution for its commercial CNPG operator.

Unveiled at KubeCon Europe in Amsterdam, these innovations underpin the EDB Postgres® AI (EDB PG AI) platform and empower organizations to break hyperscaler lock-in. By providing a portable, cloud-neutral foundation across on-premises and cloud environments, EDB enables enterprises to build and maintain truly sovereign AI and data infrastructures.

The Mandate for Agentic Success and European Security Compliance

AI and data sovereignty in open-source dominates the strategy for 80% of major enterprises in EMEA. Just 13% of enterprises are winning with their AI and data—and they’re doing it with sovereign data platforms, typically on Postgres in hybrid environments, delivering control, compliance, and up to 5× the ROI. These enterprises are succeeding through sovereignty and agility in their own secure environments.

EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) requires a secure, compliant foundation with full software supply chain visibility—including verified component provenance, a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), and independently managed security patching.

“Over 80% of organizations now run Kubernetes in production—with databases as the primary workload and AI/ML adoption accelerating fast. This shift is redefining how PostgreSQL must operate: not as a static database, but as a portable, cloud-native foundation for sovereign AI,” said Gabriele Bartolini, VP and Chief Architect of Kubernetes at EDB.

Modular Extensions and Supply Chain Security in CNPG 1.29

CloudNativePG (CNPG), has quickly become the de facto standard for running PostgreSQL in Kubernetes and is the fastest-growing Postgres operator, with over 8,000 GitHub stars. Backed by EDB as its lead maintainer and a rapidly expanding open-source community, CNPG continues to evolve at a rapid pace with monthly releases.

With version 1.29, CNPG introduces modular extensions and built-in supply chain security—decoupling PostgreSQL extensions from the core database to eliminate monolithic, custom-built images and significantly reduce operational complexity. Users can now dynamically install only the extensions they need—such as AI-driven vector search—on demand, enabling a more flexible, lightweight, and secure Postgres deployment model.

“By embedding the intelligence of a DBA as an operational brain within Kubernetes, you remove the Operational Wall of the hyperscalers, creating a DBaaS that is automated enough for developers but sovereign enough for the enterprise,” added Bartolini.

Kubernetes-Native Backup and Enterprise Data Protection

While CNPG continues to advance open-source innovation, EDB will be extending these capabilities and introducing new features for enterprise customers with a next-generation, Kubernetes-native data protection solution—now in preview in EDB Postgres® AI for CloudNativePG, EDB’s enterprise-grade CNPG operator.

Moving beyond legacy backup tools designed for a pre-container era, this exclusive preview delivers Zero Data Loss (RPO=0) through native WAL streaming. Managed through one centralized interface, the solution provides rapid, global disaster recovery and end-to-end encryption with FIPS 140-3 level security. Ultimately, this cloud-neutral approach ensures that enterprise workloads remain resilient and portable across any environment without provider lock-in.

Crucially, across both modular extensions and enterprise capabilities such as data protection, each component is delivered as a verified, immutable artifact—ensuring what runs in production is exactly what was tested. This zero-trust model supports compliance with frameworks like the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), with built-in support for SBOMs, clear component provenance, and independent security patching.

The Gold Standard for Enterprise Postgres on Kubernetes

By eliminating cloud infrastructure overhead and restoring operational control, organizations can shift from unpredictable cloud spend to a more controlled cost model—while unlocking consistent, high-performance Postgres across environments.

These advancements build on EDB’s long-standing stewardship of PostgreSQL, CloudNativePG, and the broader open-source ecosystem. As the leading commercial contributor to PostgreSQL—accounting for over 30% of core development and 45% of ecosystem contributions.

EDB at KubeCon Europe

EDB showcased a preview of the new data protection solution, with the company’s CNPG experts presenting at the following sessions:

Gabriele Bartolini, Floor Drees – Beyond the DBaaS trap: Achieving Data Sovereignty With Kubernetes and CloudnativePG
Gabriele Bartolini, Laurent Parodi (HSBC) – From VMs to Kubernetes in a large global bank: a DBA’s journey
Gabriele Quaresima – Project Lightning Talk: Five minutes by the CloudNativePG river

Get a complementary digital PDF or hard copy of the O’Reilly book: Building a Data and AI Platform with PostgreSQL.

About EDB

EDB Postgres^® AI (EDB PG AI) is the first open, enterprise-grade sovereign data and AI platform—secure, compliant, and scalable, on-premises and across clouds. Built on Postgres, the world’s leading database, EDB PG AI unifies transactional, analytical, and AI workloads, enabling organizations to operationalize their data and LLMs while maintaining control over sovereign environments. EDB PG AI is supported by a global partner network and delivers up to 99.999% availability as well as hybrid management and a built-in AI factory. As one of the most active contributors to the PostgreSQL project, EDB is deeply invested in the vitality of the global community. To learn more, visit www.enterprisedb.com.

Media contact:
Steph McGuirk
Interdependence
(845) 269-8868
[email protected]

EnterpriseDB and EDB are registered trademarks of EnterpriseDB Corporation. Postgres and PostgreSQL are registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada and used with their permission. CloudNativePG is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®) project. CloudNativePG is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. All other trademarks are owned by their respective owners.

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