From Declarative to Intelligent: How Crossplane’s Graduation Redefines Infrastructure

When we open-sourced Crossplane in 2018, our goal was simple:
bring the power of Kubernetes-style control to everything.

Today, that vision has become reality.
Crossplane is now officially a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Graduated Project, marking one of the most significant milestones in cloud-native infrastructure since Kubernetes itself.

Graduation means more than maturity, it represents an architectural shift. Crossplane isn’t just infrastructure as code; it’s the foundation of declarative control, unifying desired state and policy through open, Kubernetes-native APIs.

Built on that foundation, Upbound Crossplane (UXP) extends declarative control into the Intelligent Control Plane, adding enterprise-grade security, observability, and AI-enhanced automation to enable platforms to understand intent and operate at any scale.

From Open-Source Experiment to Industry Standard

Crossplane started as an idea at Upbound: what if we could extend Kubernetes to control everything, from databases to SaaS to AI systems, using the same declarative API model?

That idea took root in the community and grew fast.
Since joining CNCF in 2020, Crossplane has evolved from a promising open-source project to a core building block of modern enterprise platforms, powering production systems for Fortune 50 companies, global banks, and hyperscalers.

• 3,000+ contributors from 450+ companies
• Top 10% of all CNCF projects by contributor activity
• Over 100 million downloads
• Adopted by 1,000+ organizations across industries

From NASA Science Cloud to Nike, from SAP to Elastic, organizations are choosing Crossplane because it provides a proven foundation for unified, declarative control across clouds and environments.

Why This Moment Matters

AI has changed how we build and run software.
But while models and agents have accelerated development, infrastructure remains trapped in human workflows, scripts, tickets, and manual approvals that slow everything down.

Crossplane’s architecture fixes that.
By unifying desired state, actual state, and policy enforcement through declarative APIs, Crossplane gives both humans and AI agents a shared language for infrastructure.
It’s the missing layer between cloud automation and AI-native operations, a system designed to run platforms that are secure, scalable, and adaptive by design.

From Declarative Control to Intelligent Infrastructure

With Upbound Crossplane (UXP) 2.0, we’re extending this foundation into what we call the Intelligent Control Plane, the next evolution of cloud infrastructure.
Built on Crossplane v2.0, UXP 2.0 adds enterprise-grade stability, security, and built-in intelligence:

• Control Plane Project Tooling — Everything platform teams need to design, deploy, and manage secure control planes.
• Web UI for Crossplane — Monitor health, troubleshoot, and manage resources visually, no YAML required.
• Hardened for Production — Fully verified, continuously tested, SLA-backed stability.
• AI-Enhanced Operations — Predictive tuning, anomaly detection, and GPT/Claude-powered insights.
   

Together, Crossplane and Upbound Crossplane mark a clear shift in how infrastructure is built and operated. Declarative APIs made infrastructure programmable; intelligent control makes it adaptive. This evolution turns infrastructure from a static system of configuration into a dynamic ecosystem capable of understanding intent, maintaining security, and operating autonomously across environments.

These capabilities make UXP 2.0 the Intelligent Control Plane for the Agentic AI Era, where both humans and AI agents can provision, observe, and adapt infrastructure in real time.

Trusted by the World’s Largest Enterprises

Some of the world’s most complex organizations, including the largest global banks and technology companies, already rely on Upbound to power secure, multi-cloud infrastructure platforms.
They’re achieving:

• 30% increase in SRE efficiency
• 98% reduction in DevOps overhead
• 100× scale improvements
• 99.98% faster deployments — from months to minutes

For many enterprises, the Intelligent Control Plane is already taking shape in production.

“Crossplane’s graduation reflects how this architecture has matured from an emerging idea to an industry standard,” said Bassam Tabbara, Founder and CEO of Upbound. “It’s exciting to see the community and ecosystem advancing toward more secure, scalable, and intelligent infrastructure, built on open foundations.”

The Path to Autonomous Infrastructure

Crossplane’s graduation marks the next stage in the evolution of cloud-native platforms, from simple declarative control toward more adaptive, resilient systems.

This progression is already underway. Organizations are using Crossplane to standardize how they manage infrastructure, embed operational context, and improve reliability across environments, all built on the proven foundation of Kubernetes.

As these patterns mature, they form the blueprint for a new generation of platform architectures, ones that unify control, context, and automation.

The Intelligent Control Plane is the architecture that makes it possible.

Join the Next Era of Infrastructure

Crossplane’s CNCF graduation is a community achievement, one made possible by thousands of contributors, adopters, and advocates across the ecosystem.

It also sets the stage for what’s ahead: AI-native infrastructure that adapts, secures, and scales itself.

With Upbound Crossplane (UXP), that future is already taking shape. Built and maintained by the creators of Crossplane, UXP combines enterprise-grade reliability with intelligent control, ensuring today’s platform teams are ready for tomorrow’s AI-driven operations.

If you’re building the next generation of platforms, this is your foundation.
Build with Upbound Crossplane, powered by the open Crossplane project.

Start on the same foundation trusted by the community, and scale with the enterprise-ready Intelligent Control Plane built for what’s next.
Build with confidence for both humans and agents