E198: How Unikraft Launches AI Agents in

This Open Source Startup Podcast episode has our co-hosts Robby and Tim in conversation with Dr. Felipe Huici, CEO of Unikraft - the compute layer for sandboxes, AI agents, or any workload with VM-grade isolation. Their open source, also called unikraft, has 4K stars on GitHub and provides a next-generation cloud native kernel. This episode explores how Unikraft is building infrastructure for the next generation of AI agents, arguing that agents should run in virtual machines rather than containers. The conversation focuses on the unique requirements of agentic workloads: fast startup times, the ability to pause and resume state, strong isolation, and efficient resource utilization at massive scale. Unikraft’s technology enables lightweight virtual machines that can start in under 10 milliseconds, helping companies reduce latency, lower infrastructure costs, and run large numbers of ephemeral agents on minimal hardware. The discussion also covers emerging AI infrastructure needs such as checkpointing, branching, headless browser automation, and GPU access.The podcast also traces Unikraft’s origins from an academic research project to an open-source Linux Foundation initiative and, eventually, a startup founded in 2022. The conversation examines customer adoption, the role of Unikraft as foundational infrastructure for AI platforms, competition and collaboration within the agent ecosystem, the future of GPUs and virtualization, and lessons learned from building a company in the rapidly evolving cloud and AI infrastructure market.