AI hyped but better grounded than crypto, says Red Hat CTO Chris Wright

Chris Wright compares AI trajectory to early days of cloud tech; Red Hat to focus on enabling flexible infrastructure for AI workloads across platforms

The artificial intelligence (AI) hype cycle will include elements that may not fully materialise over time, but the technology is more grounded and promising than others like cryptocurrencies or non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Chris Wright.

 

“A better analogue would be all of the hype we saw, maybe 15 years ago, for this new technology called cloud. And cloud ultimately has had a massive impact on businesses. In the early days, the sense was that the impact would hit us within a year, but the journeys were much longer. For a very disruptive and critical technology, it may take a little longer,” Wright said during a select media roundtable at the ongoing Red Hat Summit 2025.

 

The roundtable was also attended by the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer Matt Hicks, Chief Product Officer Ashesh Badani, Chief Revenue Officer Andrew Brown, and other senior executives. 

 

Founded in 1993, the US-headquartered company is a subsidiary of IBM and is among the world’s leading software firms providing open-source solutions to enterprises.

 

The company, which began as an infrastructure provider for businesses, will continue to play a similar role in the AI era, said Hicks.

 

“In the old days, it meant being able to boot a server and provide a stable base for applications to be built. In the AI world, there is not so much booting, but enabling any GPU (graphics processing unit) or any accelerator and then allowing any model to run on top of it,” he explained.

 

Enabling companies to build with choice and flexibility will be key for Red Hat in the future, Hicks added.