Agent fleets drag the messaging layer from afterthought to AI’s coordination core

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation graduated NATS, the open-source topic-based messaging system created in 2010, in November 2026, as ephemeral AI agent fleets and sandboxed workloads push more machine-to-machine traffic through infrastructure. NATS maintainers Andrew Connolly and Waldemar Quevedo of Synadia Communications said at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA that Nvidia built its AI factory event bus on NATS as part of its DSX reference architecture, data center operators use it for power and cooling telemetry, and one AI app builder rebuilt its real-time service on NATS to serve millions of subscriptions. "In some sense, agentic systems are just microservices systems, but at a bigger scale," Connolly said, adding that NATS's JetStream persistence engine and key-value store preserve the state agents need to hand off work.

Agent fleets drag the messaging layer from afterthought to AI’s coordination core Data center telemetry, sandboxed AI workloads and fleets of agents are pushing more machine-to-machine traffic https://siliconangle.com/2026/11/11/agent-sandboxing-how-google-s-substrate-isolates-ai-agents-kubeconna/ through infrastructure than ever before, exposing the limits of messaging systems built for steadier demand. That shift is drawing attention to the Neural Autonomic Transport System, an open-source messaging system that lets applications and services exchange messages by topic. Created in 2010, NATS graduated from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2026/11/10/cncf-announces-nats-graduation-solidifying-a-production-ready-foundation-for-messaging-across-cloud-and-edge/ in November 2026. Its simple design suits AI workloads, according to Andrew Connolly https://www.linkedin.com/in/taconnolly1/ pictured, left , NATS project maintainer at Synadia Communications Inc., a provider of managed NATS services. When AI tools like Lovable can turn a plain-language prompt into a working web app, the messaging layer has to keep updates flowing as sandboxes come and go. “What’s changed in the current context, or landscape, is everything is really ephemeral. If you take the Lovable example, connections coming and going really fast, tons of churn, tons of sandboxes, all these things spinning up, spinning down,” Connolly said. “Not every technology can handle that.” Connolly and Waldemar Quevedo https://www.linkedin.com/in/waldemarquevedo/ right , project maintainer of NATS at Synadia, spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier https://www.linkedin.com/in/furrier/ and Rebecca Knight https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-m-knight-3667a94/ at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA https://www.thecube.net/events/linux-foundation/kubecon-cloudnativecon-na-2026 , during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how NATS handles traffic from short-lived sandboxes, carries data center telemetry and helps AI agents hand off work. Disclosure below. Data center telemetry and agent traffic converge on NATS The demands go well beyond app sandboxes. The project itself has grown from single-cluster deployments into a system that spans data centers, regions and clouds, with one AI app builder recently rebuilding its real-time service on NATS https://www.synadia.com/blog/lovable-realtime-nats to serve millions of subscriptions, Quevedo noted. “NATS has evolved to be able to communicate multiple data centers with a super cluster topology with the gateways,” Quevedo said. “It is smart at routing the interest graph out to multiple regions, multiple availability zones, multi-cloud.” Some data center operators use NATS to carry power and cooling telemetry, and Nvidia Corp. built its AI factory event bus https://www.synadia.com/blog/nvidia-built-its-ai-factory-event-bus-on-nats on the system as part of its DSX reference architecture, Connolly said. NATS can also route messages across fleets of AI agents, with its JetStream persistence engine and key-value store preserving the state agents need to hand off work. “In some sense, agentic systems are just microservices systems, but at a bigger scale,” Connolly said. “NATS was good for microservices. It’s going to be great for AI agents.” Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA https://www.thecube.net/events/linux-foundation/kubecon-cloudnativecon-na-2026 : Disclosure: The Linux Foundation sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither The Linux Foundation nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE. Photo: SiliconANGLE A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. 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