Coredge Taps Lightbits to Fuel Sovereign AI Cloud Expansion in India

SAN JOSE, CA – March 09, 2026 – In a significant move to bolster its next-generation artificial intelligence infrastructure, cloud solutions provider Coredge has selected Lightbits Labs' software-defined storage to power its expanding AI cloud services. The collaboration, announced today, will underpin a new multi-petabyte, cloud-native deployment in India, marking a critical step in Coredge's global growth strategy following its recent acquisition by Sirius Digitech.

The partnership signals a decisive industry shift away from costly and inflexible legacy storage systems towards more agile, high-performance solutions capable of handling the immense demands of large-scale AI workloads. Coredge, which builds sovereign cloud platforms for regulated industries, will leverage Lightbits' innovative NVMe® over TCP (NVMe/TCP) technology to build a scalable and cost-effective foundation for its services.

The Strategic Push for Sovereign AI Clouds

This infrastructure overhaul is a cornerstone of Coredge's ambitious expansion plans. Acquired in mid-2024 by Sirius Digitech—a joint venture between the Adani Group and Sirius International Holding—Coredge is at the forefront of a strategic push to deliver secure, localized AI cloud technologies. The global market is increasingly demanding data sovereignty, where governments and enterprises require sensitive data for AI training and inference to remain within national borders, free from the sole reliance on monolithic public clouds.

Coredge specializes in this exact niche, building and operating OpenShift-based Kubernetes cloud platforms optimized for performance-sensitive use cases in telecommunications, public sector, and other regulated fields. The new deployment in India is the first major initiative post-acquisition, designed to support a rapidly growing footprint without being tethered to the high costs and architectural rigidity of traditional Storage Area Networks (SANs). By establishing this high-performance infrastructure, Coredge is positioning itself to capture a significant share of the burgeoning sovereign cloud market, which analysts project to be a trillion-dollar global opportunity.

A Paradigm Shift in Storage Architecture

The decision to partner with Lightbits represents a fundamental change in how high-performance storage is architected for AI. For years, organizations have relied on proprietary hardware-based SANs, which often create vendor lock-in, introduce operational complexity, and struggle to scale efficiently for the dynamic nature of cloud-native workloads. Coredge's choice to bypass these legacy systems highlights the growing confidence in software-defined solutions.

Lightbits Labs, the inventor of the NVMe/TCP protocol, offers a software-defined block storage solution that delivers ultra-low latency and exceptional throughput over standard, ubiquitous Ethernet networks. This eliminates the need for specialized and expensive networking fabrics like Fibre Channel or RDMA, dramatically simplifying deployment and reducing infrastructure costs. The architecture is purpose-built for the demands of modern data centers running AI, real-time analytics, and mission-critical enterprise applications.

“AI workloads demand far more than raw capacity—they require predictable low latency and consistent performance at scale,” said Abhimanyu Bhatter, Co-Founder and Associate Vice President of Technology at Coredge. “Lightbits enables us to grow our business by delivering highly performant, premium services using open, software-defined, NVMe-based infrastructure that aligns with our operational strategy.”

Unpacking Performance and Economic Benefits

The technical advantages of the Lightbits platform are central to Coredge's ability to serve its target market. AI and machine learning pipelines—from data pre-processing and model training to real-time inference—are notoriously demanding on storage, requiring consistently low latency to prevent processing bottlenecks. Independent analyses show that NVMe/TCP can deliver significant performance gains over older protocols like iSCSI, and Lightbits' implementation has demonstrated superior performance even when compared to high-end native storage offerings on public clouds.

This performance does not come at a premium. A key driver of the partnership is the significant reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). By leveraging commodity hardware and standard Ethernet, Coredge avoids the steep capital expenditures associated with proprietary storage arrays. Furthermore, the software-defined model enables efficiencies like thin provisioning and data compression, ensuring storage resources are used optimally. The disaggregated architecture allows Coredge to scale compute and storage resources independently, providing the flexibility to grow its infrastructure in lockstep with customer demand, thereby preventing over-provisioning and wasted capital.

This cost-efficient, high-performance model is precisely what enables Coredge to offer competitive, premium services for AI workloads that were previously the domain of only the largest hyperscale cloud providers.

Seamless Integration for Cloud-Native Agility

Beyond raw performance and cost savings, the deep integration of Lightbits' software with cloud-native orchestration platforms was a critical factor in Coredge's decision. Coredge’s services are built on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, and operational agility is paramount. Lightbits provides a certified Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugin that allows for the seamless, dynamic provisioning and management of persistent storage for both containerized applications and virtual machines.

This integration streamlines operations, allowing Coredge to automate storage management and accelerate its time-to-market for new AI and cloud services. The platform ensures that applications retain high performance while benefiting from the core portability and scalability of Kubernetes. It also enhances data resilience through built-in data protection features and compatibility with modern backup solutions like Veeam Kasten, helping Coredge meet the stringent availability and compliance requirements of its regulated customers.

“Lightbits provides the speed and predictability required for the latency-sensitive workloads run on Coredge’s platforms, while at the same time providing Coredge the ability to scale on commodity infrastructure cost-efficiently,” added Keimpe Paulus, Vice President and EMEA Territory Lead at Lightbits Labs. “We’re excited to support their goal to expand their platforms and services.” As Coredge embarks on its global expansion, this modernized data infrastructure will serve as the essential, high-performance backbone for its sovereign AI cloud ambitions.