Soda Foundation

What Soda Foundation does

SODA Foundation is a non-profit open-source foundation chartered under the Linux Foundation on June 29, 2020, evolving from the earlier OpenSDS project. It provides an open-source ecosystem for unified data and storage management, enabling data mobility from edge to core to cloud across heterogeneous environments. The foundation operates a portfolio of projects including the Open Data Framework (unified API for block, file, and object storage with multi-cloud support), YIG (massively scalable object storage donated by China Unicom, with 5PB+ in production), DAOS (distributed asynchronous object storage donated by Intel for HPC workloads), Kahu (container backup/restore), and Delfin (heterogeneous storage infrastructure management). The foundation also launched SODA Contexture, an Open Context Engine for AI Agents that implements the Open Context Schema (OCS) standard and native MCP integration, providing operational context to AI systems across 20+ operational platforms.

The foundation is funded through membership dues from Premier, General, Supporting, and Associate tier members, with Premier members including China Unicom, Fujitsu, Intel, IBM, Toyota Motor Corporation, and NTT Communications. It operates as a member-driven organization with end-user driven governance through an End User Advisory Committee, ensuring roadmap alignment with real-world enterprise storage requirements. The foundation serves enterprise storage operators, storage vendors, AI/ML practitioners building agents and copilots, and open-source developers across global regional communities in Japan, China, India, Americas, and Europe.

Business operations rely entirely on open-source distribution through GitHub, Docker Hub, documentation portals, and Ansible installers, with no commercial product pricing. The foundation hosts the annual SODACON conference, publishes annual Data and Storage Trends reports in partnership with Linux Foundation Research, and maintains strategic alliances with SNIA, CNCF, Open Infrastructure Foundation, and regional industry bodies (JDSF, CESI, CCICI). The Linux Foundation provides governance, infrastructure, and operational support for the SODA ecosystem.

Name

Soda Foundation

Legal name

SODA Foundation

Website

https://sodafoundation.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2020

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

SODA Foundation is a Linux Foundation non-profit providing open-source data and storage management software, including the Open Data Framework, YIG, DAOS, and the SODA Contexture AI context engine, serving enterprise storage operators and AI developers globally through member-funded open-source distribution.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Source Data and Storage Management

NAICS

Software Publishers (51321), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518)

SIC

Computer Storage Devices (3572), Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

HCI Storage & Distributed Storage (HDABAEAJ)

akta.pro secondary industries

Cloud Storage Core Services (Object/Block/File Storage as a Service) (HDABAAAK), Enterprise Storage Arrays (SAN/NAS/Object Storage) (HDACACAB)

Keywords

• Open source data management
• Storage infrastructure software
• Multi-cloud storage platform
• AI operational context
• Container data protection

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Member Dues: SODA Foundation is funded through membership dues from Premier, General, and Supporting members. Premier members include companies like Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, Toyota, NTT Communications, and China Unicom. The foundation operates as a neutral forum under the Linux Foundation.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

SODA Foundation provides open source data and storage management software through multiple projects under The Linux Foundation. Core offerings include the Open Data Framework for unified block, file, and object storage management with multi-cloud support, YIG for massively scalable object storage, DAOS for high-performance HPC object storage, Kahu for container backup and restore, Delfin for heterogeneous storage infrastructure management, and SODA Contexture for delivering operational context to AI agents via the Open Context Schema (OCS) and Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Product overview

Soda Foundation is an open source project under the Linux Foundation that provides a comprehensive data management and storage ecosystem. The portfolio centers on the Open Data Framework for unified data and storage management, complemented by specialized projects including YIG (scalable object storage) and DAOS (distributed async object storage). The foundation has expanded into AI context management with SODA Contexture, an Open Context Engine for AI Agents that provides operational context through MCP (Model Context Protocol). Key sub-products include Kahu (container backup/restore), Delfin (infrastructure management), CSI Plug-N-Play (Kubernetes storage), Multi-Cloud (cross-cloud data management), and Orchestration (workflow automation). The ecosystem also includes Dashboard UI, File Share, and Object Lifecycle Management modules. All projects are designed for cloud-native, edge, AI, and 5G environments with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud support.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• SODA Contexture: Open Context Engine for AI Agents that provides operational context to AI agents via MCP transport
• Open Data Framework
• YIG
• DAOS
• Kahu
• Delfin
• SODACON

Quantifiable outcome

• 5PB+ of production data managed through YIG object storage at China Unicom
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers12 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration31 records

AI capability5 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

16 partnerships are on record, tiered core and supporting.

• Japan Data Storage Forum (JDSF)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 22 September 2020Industry organization collaboration for standardization, localization, and co-marketing efforts in Japan. JDSF is a survey partner for Data and Storage Trends reports and supports SODA community activities in Japan.
• Linux FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 29 June 2020SODA Foundation is an open source project chartered under the Linux Foundation umbrella. The Linux Foundation provides governance, infrastructure, and support for the SODA ecosystem. SODA Foundation was formerly the OpenSDS project, expanded and rechartered under Linux Foundation in June 2020.
• Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMarketing alliance with SNIA to advance education for unified framework and standardization for data and storage management. SNIA is a survey partner for Data and Storage Trends reports. SODA participated in SNIA Storage Developer Conference.
• China Electronics Standards Institute (CESI)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerIndustry partnership for standardization, localization, and co-marketing efforts in China.
• Cloud Computing Innovation Council of India (CCICI)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerIndustry partnership for standardization, localization, and co-marketing efforts in India.
• ScalitycoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFounding member and contributor exploring incubation of ZENKO project. Brad King represents Scality in Outreach committee for North America and Europe.
• LINBITsupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerExploring incubation of LINSTOR project. Contributes Yusuf Yildiz to Technical Oversight Committee and Thomas Kozlowski (Europe) and Brian Hellman (N. America) to Outreach committee.
• MayaDatasupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerExploring integration of OpenEBS CNCF project. Contributes Kiran Mova to Technical Oversight Committee and Uma Mukkara (India), Trevor Phillipe (N. America) to Outreach committee.
• WiprosupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember contributing Vinod E to Technical Oversight Committee and Sai Nath (India) to Outreach committee. Pradipta represents IBM India in Outreach.
• ProphetStorsupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember contributing Shenglin Wu to Technical Oversight Committee.
• Click2CloudsupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember contributing Prashant Mishra to Technical Oversight Committee and Rupal Shirpurkar to Outreach committee.
• Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)supportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerSurvey partner for Data and Storage Trends reports. CNCF is a collaborating open source community for SODA Foundation.
• Open Infrastructure FoundationsupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerSurvey partner for Data and Storage Trends reports. Collaborating open source foundation.
• Storage Performance CouncilsupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerSurvey partner for Data and Storage Trends reports.
• China Open Source Cloud LeaguesupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerSurvey partner for Data and Storage Trends reports. Regional open source community in China.
• Mulan Open Source CommunitysupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerSurvey partner for Data and Storage Trends reports. Regional open source community.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Confluent (Apache Kafka): Confluent commercializes Apache Kafka, the open source streaming platform integrated with SODA's Open Data Framework for event-driven data management. While broader in scope, it is a comparable Linux Foundation-incubated open source data infrastructure project that successfully commercialized.
• Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA): SNIA is the long-established industry association driving storage standards and developer education. SODA has a marketing alliance with SNIA and participates in its Storage Developer Conference, making it a cross-foundation peer in storage ecosystem development.

Direct peers

• Scality (ZENKO): Scality develops ZENKO, a multi-cloud data orchestration platform with S3-compatible interfaces, and is a founding SODA member exploring incubation. It is a direct peer in multi-cloud object storage and management.
• MinIO: MinIO is a venture-backed, S3-compatible object storage company with strong Kubernetes-native positioning. It is directly comparable to YIG and DAOS in functionality and has a SODA-native adapter for Contexture, indicating overlapping market focus.
• MayaData (OpenEBS): MayaData leads OpenEBS, a CNCF container-attached storage project, and is exploring integration with SODA Foundation. It is directly comparable as a Kubernetes-native, open source block storage solution with commercial backing.
• LINBIT (LINSTOR): LINBIT develops LINSTOR, a software-defined block storage orchestrator for Kubernetes, and is exploring incubation under SODA Foundation. It is a direct peer in the CSI-driven, container-native storage space.
• Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF): CNCF is a Linux Foundation sub-foundation hosting Kubernetes and the broader cloud-native ecosystem, including storage-adjacent projects like Rook and MinIO. It is directly comparable to SODA as a vendor-neutral open source foundation for cloud-native infrastructure, with overlapping contributor communities and similar governance models.
• Ceph (Red Hat / IBM): Ceph is the dominant open source distributed storage system, providing object, block, and file storage, and is integrated with SODA through YIG (which uses Ceph as its backend). It is the most direct technical peer for SODA's storage software portfolio.
• Open Infrastructure Foundation (OpenStack): Open Infrastructure Foundation hosts OpenStack, which provides integrated cloud computing and storage (Cinder, Swift) as open source software under a multi-vendor governance model. It is directly comparable to SODA in scope and structure, and is a listed survey partner.

Emerging players

• Rook (CNCF): Rook is a CNCF incubator project that provides Kubernetes operator-based orchestration for Ceph, Cassandra, and other storage systems. It overlaps with SODA's Kubernetes storage provisioning and CSI Plug-N-Play capabilities as an open source container storage orchestrator.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/sodafoundation
• Xx.com/sodafoundation
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/sodafoundation

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles9 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Soda Foundation