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Kata Containers 4.0 Cements the Project’s Role as the Open Source Standard for Sandboxing AI Agents

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A new Rust-based default runtime, expanded hardware support and a hardened supply chain give the project’s isolation model the strength agentic workloads demand

AUSTIN, Texas, July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Kata Containers community today announced the release of Kata Containers 4.0, a milestone that reinforces the project’s growing role as the open source foundation for sandboxing AI agents. The release’s central engineering achievement, a new Rust-based runtime, becomes the project’s default implementation, delivering the memory safety and performance gains needed to isolate agents whose behavior can’t always be predicted in advance.

Kata Containers is an open source project that combines the speed of Linux containers with the isolation of lightweight virtual machines. The project is managed by the OpenInfra Foundation and is used across multi-tenant Kubernetes environments, secure CI/CD pipelines and, increasingly, AI infrastructure.

*** Download Kata Containers 4.0

Why AI Agents Need a Stronger Sandbox

AI agents carry a different risk profile than traditional microservices: their execution paths shift based on the tools they can reach, the memory they accumulate and the prompts they receive, making them harder to trust by default. Kata Containers addresses that risk by running each workload inside its own lightweight virtual machine rather than sharing the host kernel, so a compromised agent cannot see another agent’s memory or move laterally across a cluster.

Kata Containers now serves as one of the supported runtimes for Agent Sandbox, a project under the Kubernetes SIG Apps umbrella, and remains the foundation for Confidential Containers, which encrypts data in use, allowing agent workloads to process private data without exposing it to the infrastructure operator.

*** Community experts from Ant Group, Google and NVIDIA discussed these use cases in depth during the OpenInfra Live episode on agent sandboxing, summarized in this Superuser article.

Organizations already running agent workloads in production are taking notice.

“Ant Group has long been a pioneer in deploying Kata Containers at scale. We first proved its value in co-locating our offline batch and compute workloads, where latency is less critical, to maximize resource efficiency and advance Ant Group’s green computing initiatives. To further bolster our security posture, we expanded Kata’s footprint to our core online services last year, enabling real-time security auditing and immediate mitigation of malicious access. Today, Kata has naturally become the foundational secure sandbox for our AI Agents. With its outstanding isolation and ultra-fast startup performance, Kata is now an integral part of Ant Group’s Agentic Infrastructure. The architectural leap in Kata 4.0—especially the transition to the Rust runtime—directly addresses the stringent security and efficiency requirements of modern AI sandboxing. This release is a masterpiece of community collaboration, and we are proud to drive its adoption.” — Fupan Li, Kata Containers architecture committee (AC) member and head of container technology, Ant Group

“Kata Containers 4.0 brings a memory-safe Rust foundation to one of the ecosystem’s most proven sandboxing frameworks. NVIDIA’s full GPU support, carried seamlessly from the Go runtime to Rust, enables customers to adopt 4.0 without disruption — running agentic AI and confidential workloads with stronger isolation, attestation, and performance. The NVIDIA Confidential Containers Reference Architecture, built on Kata Containers, provides NVIDIA partners a validated Confidential Computing framework for Kubernetes deployments, accelerating the path from evaluation to production. NVIDIA is proud to support this milestone and remains committed to helping customers deploy confidential AI at scale.” — Erik Bohnhorst, director of product management, NVIDIA

“Kata Containers is the foundation of our confidential computing stack here at Edgeless. Our Contrast framework shields entire fleets of containers within Kubernetes and our end-to-end encrypted GenAI inference service Privatemode AI builds directly on top of that. Kata’s pod-in-VM model is what makes this possible. The project’s continued focus on confidential computing has been essential to us. We’re excited about the 4.0 release and proud to contribute to a project that so many production workloads now depend on.” — Felix Schuster, CEO, Edgeless Systems

“Kata is a key component for many of Microsoft’s container isolation workloads such as AKS’s pod sandboxing offering. Kata’s focus on confidentiality, rust-based security, and improved agentic isolation continue to make it a valuable tool to meet the demands of our customers. Microsoft is proud to contribute to this Kata release, and to continue improving the security of AI workloads for our customers.” Jim Perrin — principal program manager lead – Azure Linux, Microsoft

A Rust-Based Foundation Makes It Possible

That level of isolation is only possible because of the architectural work behind Kata Containers 4.0. With this release, runtime-rs, the Rust-based runtime, replaces the original Go implementation as the project’s default, capping a multi-year community effort to move onto a memory-safe foundation. The change improves memory safety, reduces the runtime’s footprint and lowers startup latency, the kind of performance headroom that matters when sandboxes are being spun up and torn down at agent speed. The Go runtime is now deprecated and will continue to receive bug and security fixes during a defined transition period, but the community will not remove it before Kata Containers 5.0.

“Kata Containers 4.0 marks an important evolution for the project,” said Ildiko Vancsa, director of community for the OpenInfra Foundation. “By making the Rust runtime the default, the community is strengthening the project’s safety guarantees while creating a foundation for long-term innovation in secure cloud-native infrastructure.”

*** For the full technical breakdown, including the Go runtime deprecation timeline, supported hypervisors and hardware architectures, read the Kata Containers 4.0 release notes.

Version 4.0 also brings changes beyond the runtime: formalized release acceptance criteria, expanded hardware and hypervisor support, and a hardened software supply chain with updated dependencies and stricter CI checks. Together, these changes give the project a clearer, more predictable foundation for future releases.

*** For a closer look at the community’s work on the new Rust-based runtime, read the Kata Containers 4.0 blog post.

Get Involved

Kata Containers is an open source community that welcomes contributors across runtime development, documentation, testing and ecosystem integration.

Website: https://katacontainers.io GitHub: https://github.com/kata-containers/Slack: #general

About Kata Containers

Kata Containers is an open source project that delivers the performance of standard Linux containers with the enhanced isolation of lightweight virtual machines. Built for secure multi-tenant environments, Kata Containers enables cloud-native workloads to run with stronger isolation without sacrificing speed or compatibility. Kata Containers is managed by the OpenInfra Foundation. katacontainers.io

About the OpenInfra Foundation

The OpenInfra Foundation builds communities that write open source infrastructure software running in production. Backed by more than 110,000 individuals in 187 countries, the OpenInfra Foundation hosts open source projects and communities of practice covering AI infrastructure, container-native applications, edge computing and datacenter clouds. The OpenInfra Foundation is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. Join the OpenInfra movement: www.openinfra.org

Media Contacts:
Robert Cathey
Cathey.co for the OpenInfra Foundation
robert@cathey.co
Allison Price
OpenInfra Foundation
allison@openinfra.org 

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SOURCE OpenInfra Foundation

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RocketReach Launches RocketReach MCP, Giving AI Assistants Direct Access to 700M+ Verified Contacts

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New integration empowers sales, recruiting, and marketing teams to prospect within ChatGPT, Claude, and others using existing RocketReach data

NEW YORK, July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — RocketReach, the leading sales and lead intelligence platform trusted by more than 30 million users and 95% of the S&P 500, today announced the launch of the RocketReach MCP Server. This milestone gives AI assistants direct, real-time access to RocketReach’s database of 700 million verified contacts and 60 million companies via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

The RocketReach MCP Server provides immediate compatibility with ChatGPT, Claude, and other MCP-enabled clients. The integration features a streamlined OAuth setup and allows users to perform lookups utilizing their current RocketReach credit balance without requiring additional billing or account creation.

“The best tools show up wherever people are already working. RocketReach MCP puts our entire contact database directly inside the AI assistants our customers use every day, no new tab, no new workflow, just a faster way to reach the right person. As AI transforms professional workflows, our strategy is to provide verified data exactly where teams are active. By integrating the world’s most accurate professional database directly into the AI assistants our customers rely on daily, we are removing friction and enhancing the speed of connection “

— Scott Kim, CEO, RocketReach

Optimizing Workflows Through Native AI Integration

The RocketReach MCP Server addresses the disconnect between AI assistants and the verified company data essential for sales teams. Users can ask a natural-language question such as ‘find me 20 VPs of Sales at Series B fintech companies in New York’ and get verified contact results directly inside their AI assistant, automatically saved to their RocketReach account.

The initial release of the RocketReach MCP Server includes seven core capabilities:

Comprehensive person search by title, location, and company, and moreAdvanced company filtering by industry, size, and funding stage, and moreVerified contact detail retrieval via profile identificationOn-demand access to detailed company profilesUnified calls for simultaneous person and company data lookupsReal-time account credit and usage monitoringServer connectivity and status verification

Verified by Default

Unlike single-vendor AI integrations from some competitors, RocketReach MCP is client-neutral by design — one server connects to every major AI platform. Every lookup runs through RocketReach’s real-time email verification, so AI assistants are working with data that’s accurate now, not a static cache. Connections run on OAuth 2.1, RocketReach never shares credentials with the AI client, and users can disconnect any individual AI client independently at any time from their RocketReach account settings.

“From day one, our focus was on building an MCP that customers could trust. Every lookup through RocketReach’s MCP server is verified in real time, using the same proprietary verification engine that powers our core platform.

— Jeremy Livingston, CTO, RocketReach

Market Availability

The RocketReach MCP Server is currently available to all RocketReach users. Search for RocketReach in ChatGPT Plugins, add RocketReach as a new custom Connector in Claude, or reference our detailed documentation and setup guides that can be found at knowledgebase.rocketreach.co.

About RocketReach

RocketReach is the leading sales and lead intelligence platform trusted by more than 30 million users and 95% of the S&P 500. Powered by proprietary technology, RocketReach provides access to over 700 million contacts and 60 million companies worldwide. Sales, recruiting, and marketing teams rely on RocketReach to connect directly with the right people and decision-makers. Learn more at www.rocketreach.co.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rocketreach-launches-rocketreach-mcp-giving-ai-assistants-direct-access-to-700m-verified-contacts-302832384.html

SOURCE RocketReach.co

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Hood River Tree Farm Carbon Project Issues Core Carbon Principles (CCP) Labeled Offsets

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PORTLAND, Ore., July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Climate Trust (TCT), an Oregon-based nonprofit leader in carbon finance and project development, today announced the first issuance of carbon credits from the Hood River County Tree Farm project. The forest carbon project joins the initial cohort of projects to receive the Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM). Carbon revenues will support the county’s complex multiple use forest management strategy that seeks to combine timber revenue generation for the county budget with world-class recreational opportunities and diverse wildlife habitat.

“Generating offset revenues gives us an incentive to store substantially more carbon when managing the forest for long-term benefits” explained Doug Thiesies, Hood River County’s Forestry Director. “We are excited to embark upon this new chapter with The Climate Trust.” The County plans to purchase additional forestland with carbon revenues and enroll it in the project.

Spanning over 32,000 acres of Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine forest, most of which are over 65 years old, the project provides significant climate benefits by committing the county to sequestering and storing forest carbon over the project’s 40-year term. Registered under the ACR Improved Forest Management on Non-Federal U.S. Forestland Version 2.1 Methodology, the project was developed by TCT in partnership with the Hood River County Forestry Department.

In the Pacific Northwest’s highly productive forests and strong timber market, there is immense potential to store more carbon through extending timber rotations beyond typical practices. Landowners frequently harvest all their timber over 45 years old in the northwest. Carbon crediting is based on the County Tree Farm committing to extend the average rotation age up to 90-years, far exceeding average age class and structural diversity observed on nearby industrially managed forests. The project will employ a dynamic baseline that requires recalculating carbon credit impact every few years to ensure ongoing crediting accuracy.

County residents and the larger community will benefit from the carbon project being located on a publicly owned and managed forest. “Community forest carbon projects like the Hood River County Tree Farm benefit so many people,” said Julius Pasay, TCT’s Executive Director. “We are thrilled that this project is generating public revenue in addition to supporting recreational opportunities for the community.”

“In timber-dependent counties, counties look to timber harvest as a means to fund essential services,” elaborated Allison Williams, Hood River County’s Administrator. “The carbon project provides an incentive to manage the forest for public benefit and disincentivize increasing timber harvest to fund general operations.”

Open to the public, The Hood River County Tree Farm serves as an important area for recreation activities such as mountain biking, OHV and hiking. In addition to these recreational opportunities, the Tree Farm’s sustainable management supports and protects a vibrant ecosystem that many threatened species rely on including the Northern Spotted Owl, Bull Trout, Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, and Steelhead.

If you’re interested in supporting this project, click here to connect with our team.

About The Climate Trust
Founded in 1997, The Climate Trust (TCT) is a nonprofit project developer focused on utilizing carbon markets to scale climate mitigation outcomes. TCT believes that carbon emissions reductions and good land stewardship go hand in hand – a core belief that has driven the organization’s work for over 25 years. TCT seeks to promote healthy ecosystems and resilient communities by scaling nature-based solutions and mobilizing markets to solve ecological issues in three areas of carbon project development and financing: Reforestation/Afforestation, Grassland Conservation, and Improved Forest Management.

Julius Pasay, Executive Director – jpasay@climatetrust.org 

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SOURCE The Climate Trust

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DCI Strengthens Lobbying and Strategic Alliances Teams, Announces New Hires

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Two senior hires bring decades of experience to DCI

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Bipartisan public affairs firm DCI Group announced the hiring of two seasoned professionals, Tim Dupin and Tim Martin, further strengthening the firm’s strategic alliances and government relations capabilities. Dupin brings decades of experience in labor relations, center-left coalition building, and stakeholder engagement to the firm’s strategic alliances team, while Martin joins DCI Senior Advisor Doug Davenport to expand DCI’s lobbying practice.

Tim Dupin joins DCI as a Director, where he will support coalition-building, stakeholder engagement, and advocacy efforts, with a particular focus on labor organizations and allied constituencies. He brings extensive experience in center-left strategic alliances, grassroots advocacy, third-party engagement, and labor relations.

“Tim Dupin has built an impressive career bringing together organizations, advocates, and stakeholders to advance meaningful policy priorities,” said Managing Partner Brian McCabe. “As a bipartisan firm, his deep relationships within the labor community and extensive experience leading center-left coalition and grassroots efforts will strengthen DCI’s strategic alliances team and create even greater opportunities for our clients to build broad-based support for their initiatives.”

Prior to joining DCI, Dupin served as Director of Political Action at the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), where he managed national political and legislative campaigns. Dupin previously served as a firefighter and labor leader in Kansas City, Missouri, including as President of the Greater Kansas City Fire Fighters IAFF Local 42, and retired as a Fire Captain. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Labor Studies from the National Labor College and attended the Harvard Trade Union Program at Harvard Law School.

“DCI was built on growing and maintaining relationships, and I’m thrilled to support the strategic alliances team,” Dupin said. “I’m impressed with the character of the people who work at DCI, their commitment to their clients, and their singular focus on execution. I’m excited to be part of the team.”

Meanwhile, Tim Martin joins DCI as a Senior Vice President, where he will help expand the firm’s government relations and lobbying practice. Working alongside DCI Senior Advisor Doug Davenport, he brings deep experience in transportation, energy, and regulatory policy.

“Tim Martin brings exactly the kind of experience clients need as they navigate an increasingly complex legislative and regulatory environment,” said DCI Managing Partner Justin Peterson. “His background advising on transportation, energy, and public policy, combined with years of experience on Capitol Hill and in private practice, will be instrumental as we continue to grow our government relations and lobbying capabilities.”

Prior to joining DCI, Martin served as Vice President at Invariant, where he advised clients on legislative and regulatory strategy and led the firm’s transportation and infrastructure practice group. He previously served as Public Policy Counsel at WilmerHale, legislative director for Congressman Rodney Davis (R-IL), and general counsel to Congressman Scott Tipton (R-CO). Tim received a Juris Doctor from New York Law School and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is originally from Summit, New Jersey.

“I’m excited to help grow DCI’s lobbying practice,” Martin said. “For years, DCI has been known for having the best public affairs operation in the business. Adding lobbying services will only enhance the firm’s effectiveness for our clients, and I’m proud to be a part of that.”

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dci-strengthens-lobbying-and-strategic-alliances-teams-announces-new-hires-302832391.html

SOURCE DCI GROUP AZ, L.L.C.

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