Who we are
Defense Pods is the sovereign-defense brand of Kubermatic, a German-headquartered company based in Hamburg that has been building Kubernetes management software since 2016. Kubermatic is a CNCF Kubernetes Certified Service Provider and Training Partner, and the only Germany-headquartered vendor named in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Container Management.
Kubermatic already works with German defense. It provides the foundation for the sovereign, GPU-powered AI infrastructure at BWI, the Bundeswehr’s IT and digitalization partner, which is already in production. Read the case study or the ES&T coverage.
We created a dedicated brand because sovereignty in defense and the public sector is a distinct conversation: one that deserves its own language, proof, and a standard of honesty built specifically for it.
Why a German HQ matters here
For European sovereignty, where the vendor is based matters. A platform can be hosted in Europe and still be subject to the laws of another country. As a German company, we operate under German and EU law, with no foreign parent company or non-European jurisdiction behind the platform.
The honesty principle
This brand’s credibility depends on not doing what it accuses others of: “sovereignty washing.” So we operate under one rule, internally and externally:
If you can’t cite it, mark it internal and hold it.
Every capability, certification, clearance, and customer reference on this site is either substantiated or absent. Performance figures from production deployments are labelled as vendor claims. Certifications appear only where they are held. Named defense references are withheld until the customer and Legal clear them.
For more on our approach to sovereignty, see Kubermatic’s approach to data sovereignty.
For us, this is the only credible way to build a sovereignty brand.
The platform
Underneath the brand is Kubermatic’s open-source platform: a Kubernetes-in-Kubernetes architecture for air-gapped fleets, Kubernetes-native virtualization for a VMware exit, and self-hosted secrets. All of it is open source you can audit and run yourself.