Every month, we share what’s new in KitOps, along with project updates and community content from our ever growing community. As 2025 comes to an end, we were tempted to jump on the “2025 Wrapped” bandwagon and show you how much KitOps has grown which is made possible by your contributions and by everyone who has embraced the project.Â
Let’s go through some amazing numbers:Â
200,000+ KitOps Downloads
KitOps crossed 200K downloads, with steady month-over-month growth throughout the year. What started as early adoption quickly turned into sustained traction, as more teams have embraced KitOps for their use-cases.Â
1000+ Github Stars
We crossed 1,260 GitHub stars, welcomed 2,675 newsletter subscribers, and saw an average of 140,000 monthly visits. Even more importantly, KitOps averaged 4,000 installs every week, showing a strong interest in the project.Â
KitOps Champions
Open source only moves forward because people show up and in 2025, these individuals went above and beyond to help shape up the KitOps Community. The KitOps Champions are contributors, advocates, and early adopters who helped shape the project through code, feedback, talks. You can check the list of current champions here. And if you wish to join the Champions program, just reach out to us!
Here’s a quick recap of what happened in 2025:Â
KitOps v1.0
In January 2025, KitOps officially released version 1.0, a major milestone that completed the project’s core vision for packaging and versioning ML workflows.
The CNCF announcement highlighted that v1.0 delivered:
A stable, OCI-based standard for packaging models, code, configuration, and metadata
Mature CLI workflows suitable for CI/CD and production environments
Proven real-world usage, with 45,000+ installs already at the time of release and adoption across enterprise and public-sector teams
CNCF Sandbox Acceptance (March 2025)
On March 4, 2025, KitOps was officially accepted into the CNCF Sandbox.
This milestone:
Validated KitOps as a vendor-neutral open standard
Gave the project a clear path toward CNCF incubation
Integrated End-to-End MLOps Workflows
A CNCF blog published in July 2025 highlighted how KitOps fits into complete AI pipelines.
Using KitOps, teams can:
Package models, code, and data into a single OCI-based artifact
Test the same artifact using tools like Cog
Deploy it at scale on Kubernetes using KAITO, without format changes
GKE & KServe Integration
With the release of KitOps v1.7.0, the project added native support for KServe on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
SBOM Generation
SBOM Generation for Supply Chain Security - All KitOps releases now include Software Bill of Materials manifests. For organizations managing compliance requirements, this provides automated documentation for ML infrastructure components, critical for regulated industries tracking software supply chain security.
CNCF ModelPack SupportÂ
In late 2025, KitOps expanded its scope beyond ModelKits by adding support for the CNCF ModelPack specification in v1.10.0.
Key capabilities include:
Creating ModelPack artifacts using kit pack --use-model-pack
Pushing, pulling, and unpacking both ModelKits and ModelPacks transparently
Full interoperability with other tools adopting the vendor-neutral ModelPack standard
What has the community been upto?
Throughout 2025, KitOps contributors, and champions actively engaged the community by representing the project at various events, podcasts and meetups.

This outreach helped educate practitioners, grow awareness, and onboard new contributors into the ecosystem.
Looking Back
Taken together, 2025 transformed KitOps from a promising idea into a recognized, production-ready, CNCF-backed open standard for packaging and deploying ML artifacts.
From v1.0 to ModelPack support, from enterprise adoption to a thriving community, KitOps laid a strong foundation for what’s next.
And If 2025 was the year KitOps proved its maturity, 2026 is about going deeper - into production workflows, ecosystem interoperability, and developer experience.
 In 2026, we’ll focus on sharing more real-world examples, reference architectures, and best practices to help teams move faster with KitOps. Open source only moves forward when people show up, and in 2026, we’re doubling down on the community. This means:
More opportunities for contributors to get involved
Expanded Champions program initiatives
If you're new to KitOps, find out more about the project here
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