Open-source software provider Red Hat is updating its partner program to deliver simplicity, predictability, and profitability. The company will also be expanding collaboration with NVIDIA to bring together enterprise open source with rack-scale AI.
The new enhancements to the Red Hat Partner Program include a structure that prioritizes co-investment to drive profitability across partners’ core business areas.
Red Hat announces new incentives for rewarding partners
Red Hat will shift away from an incentive strategy that offered simple reimbursement toward predictable rewards that compensate partners who invest in Red Hat technologies and solutions.
The new incentive structure will reward partners for valuable activities throughout the customer lifecycle, including pre-sales activities such as workshops and assessments. It is designed to reduce the necessity for partners to make upfront investments to participate in incentive benefits.
Propelling the incentives in this enhanced program includes expanding rebates and deal registration to cover additional indirect routes to market. This will broaden partner eligibility for incentives and help increase profitability for a broader range of partners. Partners will also benefit from improved deal protection.
Further, the new incentive strategy will ensure that partner incentives reflect Red Hat’s critical emerging markets.
It will also expand bookings activities to include application services and AI, in addition to product segments like RHEL, OpenShift, and Ansible Automation Platform. It will reward partners for selling success in key strategic growth areas in addition to existing product categories.
Clearer pathways for recognition in specialized and certified partner types
Further, Red Hat is announcing a new Cloud program module for Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Providers (CCSPs). The module will be available later in 2026 and represents a shift to align with the consumption economy, focusing on Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) for points rather than traditional bookings.
Red Hat will also continue enhancing its Specialized Partner program to elevate partners who demonstrate deep technical expertise and proven service capabilities.
The Specialized Partner program will now feature an open application, allowing partners to self-nominate. Specialized Partners will also earn an increased number of points, unlocking deeper benefits for each specialization that partners can complete.
Additionally, the Sell With module will move to open enrollment, enabling any qualified partner to open new pathways for revenue growth when jointly selling solutions with Red Hat.
Improved efficiency and autonomy
The new enhancements will also improve efficiency, autonomy, and ease of doing business with Red Hat.
Red Hat will launch automated crediting for marketing and demand-generation activities managed through the Red Hat Partner Demand Center and approved for Market Development Funds (MDF).
It will reduce the manual submission burden for partners, increase participation, and improve data accuracy.
Red Hat has also implemented a more consistent digital enrollment workflow across the partner program modules to provide a smoother, more user-friendly onboarding process.
Functionality will also expand to include increased permissions for partner users, to give partners greater control and visibility over opportunities, progress, and point accumulation.
Expanded collaboration with NVIDIA
Red Hat has also announced that it will expand its collaboration with NVIDIA, aligning enterprise open source technologies with the evolution of enterprise AI and advances in rack-scale AI.
By recognizing the shift from individual servers to unified, high-density systems, Red Hat seeks to capitalize on this shift with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA, which is optimized for the NVIDIA Rubin platform.
As organizations move from AI experimentation to production, the NVIDIA Rubin platform, featuring the new NVIDIA Vera CPU and advanced NVIDIA Rubin GPUs, will deliver a significant step toward intelligence for agentic AI and advanced reasoning.
Red Hat will optimize its hybrid cloud portfolio to leverage NVIDIA’s breakthroughs, starting with Day 0 support for the new platform.
This will enable Red Hat to empower organizations to scale their AI initiatives more confidently with enterprise-grade reliability and a consistent operational model across the hybrid cloud.
“NVIDIA’s architectural breakthroughs have made AI an imperative, providing that the computing stack will define the industry’s future,” said Matt Hicks, president and CEO, Red Hat. “To meet these tectonic shifts at launch, Red Hat and NVIDIA aim to provide Day 0 support for the latest NVIDIA architectures across Red Hat’s hybrid cloud and AI portfolios. Together, we are fueling the next generation of enterprise AI through the power of open source.”
The NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform will introduce a number of transformative innovations, including Vera CPU, a power-efficient CPU for gigascale AI factories, the BlueField-4 data processor, and the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale solution.
By delivering Day 0 support for the NVIDIA Rubin platform across the Red Hat AI portfolio, including:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux: This solution bridges advanced hardware and complex software ecosystems required for modern AI. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will introduce support for NVIDIA Confidential Computing for the entire AI lifecycle and provide enhanced security capabilities for GPUs, memory, and model data, while giving organizations cryptographic proof that their sensitive AI workloads are protected.
- Red Hat OpenShift: This solution will add support for NVIDIA infrastructure software and the NVIDIA CUDA X libraries to deliver optimized performance of a wide range of accelerated workloads. It will also support NVIDIA Bluefield to provide enhanced networking, advanced cluster management, and improved resource utilization through a consistent, enterprise-grade operational experience.
- Red Hat AI: This AI platform will add new integrations with NVIDIA to expand support for distributed inference using NVIDIA’s open-source models on Red Hat AI Inference Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI, and Red Hat OpenShift AI. Red Hat and NVIDIA will also expand support beyond the NVIDIA Nemotron family into other NVIDIA open models, including those for vision, robotics, and vertical-specific areas.
“Red Hat revolutionized enterprise computing with industrial-strength open-source software,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. “In the age of AI, the entire computing stack – from chips and systems to middleware, models, and the AI lifecycle – is being reinvented from the ground up. Together, NVIDIA and Red Hat are industrializing open source to bring AI to the enterprise, starting with the Vera Rubin platform.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA brings users an enterprise platform experience
Meanwhile, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA solution will support the platform features of the latest NVIDIA architectures on Day 0 of availability.
This will provide customers with a launch-ready, enterprise-class Linux platform that fully supports breakthroughs in rack-scale AI. The platform includes:
- Validated interoperability: Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a validated operating system for NVIDIA’s accelerators, helping to ensure hardware and software capabilities work seamlessly to reduce deployment friction.
- Streamlined driver management: Organizations can access validated NVIDIA GPU OpenRM drivers and the CUDA toolkit directly from Red Hat Enterprise Linux repositories. This will simplify the lifecycle management of AI infrastructure.
- Enhanced security posture: Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a foundation with features such as SELinux and proactive vulnerability management to protect sensitive data in AI training and inference environments.
- Hybrid cloud consistency: The solution – either on-prem, at the edge, or in the public cloud – will offer a unified platform for NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure, reducing infrastructure siloes and lowering the total cost of ownership.
- Commercial open source ecosystem backing: Red Hat Enterprise Linux is supported across an ecosystem of software, hardware, and cloud providers to enable greater choice and deeper capabilities across hybrid cloud environments.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux support for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform will see general availability in the second half of 2026.
Red Hat has been making moves to help customers grow going into 2026. Read more about their recent acquisition of Chatterbox Labs to improve AI safety and help companies shift from testing to rolling out AI.
