VMware challenger VergeIO has landed a major coup in the form of investment from its rivals' former CTO, Kit Colbert.

Colbert spent more than two decades at VMware before departing in 2024. Alongside several advisor roles and serving as platform CTO for AI startup Invisible, he has now thrown his weight behind the company that bills its private cloud operating system as “the infrastructure software for a VMware exit today and for the container and AI workloads that come next.”

“Twenty years inside VMware taught me that the winner in private infrastructure is a tightly integrated product across compute, storage, networking, and management,” Colbert said in a statement. “VergeIO built a private cloud operating system from the ground up, applying everything the industry has learned over the years. The product is production grade, and its compact architecture runs from the data center to the edge, spanning traditional workloads to the latest container-based and AI applications.”

Colbert joined VMware in the early 2000s, notably serving as technical lead for vMotion and Storage vMotion. He’d later run the firm’s Cloud-Native Apps business unit, which went on to become Tanzu before being named CTO in 2021.

Following Broadcom’s acquisition, he took a short break before investing in several early-stage startups, including Avtal, DataKinetic, and ZBiotics. He’s also an advisor for firms including SUSE, Terizza, and Apexti.

Colbert’s VergeIO investment comes as some VMware customers are looking for an out after rising costs and consternation around licensing changes and unilateral contractual revisions.

VergeIO views itself as the consolidated virtualization alternative, contending its VergeOS private cloud operating system replaces disparate layers with a single codebase in which virtualization, storage, networking, and tenancy are native functions.

Several VMware customers have already jumped ship, including golfing entertainment firm Topgolf, managed services and cloud provider NETdepot, and Alinsco Insurance.

Commenting on the addition, VergeIO CTO and founder Greg Campbell said: “[Colbert] helped define the modern virtualization era. His seat on the board confirms what we have told customers for years. The way out of the hypervisor tax is not a cheaper hypervisor; it is a private cloud operating system.”