From 1224AD to Cloud-Native, CLASTIX Partners with the University of Naples Federico II

NAPLES, 2 November 2026 – CLASTIX, the Kubernetes infrastructure company behind Capsule, Kamaji, and kMetal, today announced a formal research and development partnership with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (DIETI) at the University of Naples Federico II, the world's oldest public university. The program took effect on 1 October, at the department where several CLASTIX engineers earned their degrees.

For a company with headquarters in Naples, the agreement is a significant milestone. It establishes a direct link between CLASTIX's engineering team and the institution that has helped shape Europe’s scientific and technical progress for eight centuries.

A partner with eight centuries of knowledge

Founded in 1224 by Emperor Frederick II, the University of Naples Federico II is the oldest state-funded university in the world. Today it remains one of Europe's most important engines for science and enterprise.

Through its Third Mission program, the university has spun out dozens of highly specialized academic ventures across fields including artificial intelligence, quantum technology, automotive engineering, and agrifood. It is also home to the Apple Developer Academy, which hosts the Federico II Apple Foundation Program and the Advanced Research Track Experience (ARTE) that draw researchers and developers to study in Naples.

That blend of deep heritage and frontier research continues today: the university recently unveiled Partenope, one of Italy's first publicly owned superconducting quantum computers.

For CLASTIX's leadership, the partnership is both a strategic investment and a point of local pride. “For me, it’s personal,” said Gaetano Pastore, Chief Revenue Officer at CLASTIX, who was born and raised in Naples. “Federico II is part of this city's identity, and so is CLASTIX now. To see our company joining forces with the university where so many of us first learned to think like engineers is an amazing next step for our company and our customers.”

A joint research program with DIETI, built on NVIDIA technology

In a joint scientific effort, DIETI contributes research methodology while CLASTIX contributes domain and product context alongside technical execution. Advanced engineering research sits at the heart of Federico II's mission, and this work channels it into a problem at the frontier of cloud infrastructure – offloading demanding virtual-networking onto specialized hardware that includes NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, in the multi-tenant and AI environments where kMetal is built to run.

“This region has been engineering world-class infrastructure for more than two millennia, long before Silicon Valley and other tech hubs existed,” said Adriano Pezzuto, CEO and Founder of CLASTIX. “Partnering with Federico II is how we invest in our methods for the long term. It connects our product roadmap to deep research, and it helps create a path for the region's brightest engineers to build globally relevant technology without leaving home.”

This collaboration is part of the broader context of Federico II University’s scientific and technological expertise in the field of computer networks and cloud infrastructure. Among the university’s leading figures in this field is Professor Giorgio Ventre, head of the Computer Networks research group and director of the Apple Developer Academy. A co-founder and former director of the first research laboratory of the National Interuniversity Consortium for Informatics (CINI), Ventre is the author and co-author of over 200 publications, is actively involved in several European Union-funded research projects, and is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM.

“Working with CLASTIX lets our researchers test their ideas against the demands of real, large-scale infrastructure, which is where networking and cloud research becomes most valuable," said Professor Giorgio Ventre. "It is especially rewarding to collaborate with a company based in Naples, and to see our graduates carry the department's scientific approach into technology used around the world.”

For CLASTIX, the goal is twofold: to build a lasting scientific relationship with Federico II, and to deepen its commitment to advanced, accelerated cloud infrastructure – a domain where NVIDIA is a key technology partner, as CLASTIX is also a member of the NVIDIA Inception Program.

In the words of engineers

“The biggest thing this university has given me is a love for knowledge, a logical and creative way of researching and thinking that can apply to everything you do,” said Francesco Brunello, an R&D engineer at CLASTIX with a master’s degree in computer engineering. “This partnership helps the technical reality shape our business logic, so that what we build genuinely deserves to be called a solution, and not just a product rushed to market.”

His colleague Antonio Boccarossa, an R&D engineer at CLASTIX with a master's in computer engineering, added, “This university was a place to meet people with completely different mindsets, ideas, and ways of approaching a problem, which was both challenging and fulfilling. Bringing that mix of perspectives into our work leads to more complete proofs of concept, and to the clear foundational and operational architecture that a working solution requires."

Luigi De Simone, a tenure-track researcher at DIETI at the University of Naples Federico II and the scientific director of the department’s research project, had Francesco and Antonio as students during their time at the university.

His research focuses on the strength and dependability of virtualized and cloud-native systems, with particular emphasis on hypervisor robustness and fault injection, chaos engineering applied to next-generation AI Edge/Cloud infrastructures, and the virtualization of mixed-criticality real-time systems. He is a member of the Dependable and Secure Software Engineering and Real-Time Systems (DESSERT) research group.

“Having had Francesco and Antonio among my students makes this collaboration even more meaningful. It is deeply satisfying to see how engineers trained at Federico II have found a place in a technologically advanced research and development environment like CLASTIX, actively contributing to the design of innovative solutions,” said Luigi De Simone. “This collaboration represents an important opportunity to strengthen the dialogue between universities and industry, allowing us to compare the results of our research with concrete technological needs and real-world application scenarios. It is precisely through experiences like this that university education and scientific research can directly contribute to innovation and technological growth in the region.”

Part of a growing European and broader global network

The partnership deepens a network of relationships that increasingly centers on Italy and Europe. Paris-based frontier AI company Mistral, a CLASTIX customer, also co-invested in CLASTIX's recent seed round led by Italy’s CDP Venture Capital SGR, with additional co-investment by Italy’s Vertis SGR and the NextGeneration EU Fund.

CLASTIX also works with technology companies that include Dinova, Fastweb, and TINEXT Cloud. Together, these ties reflect a deliberate strategy: to provide companies with a sovereign solution for their cloud and AI infrastructure stacks.

Organisations that are interested in moving to a hyperscaler-grade Kubernetes experience – or in delivering such to their customers – should contact us here.

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About the University of Naples Federico II

Founded in 1224 by Emperor Frederick II, the University of Naples Federico II is the oldest public university in the world and one of Italy's largest, teaching across the sciences, engineering, and the humanities. Through its Third Mission program it has become a leading source of research-driven spin-offs in Southern Italy, and it hosts both the Apple Developer Academy and Partenope, one of Italy's first publicly owned superconducting quantum computers.

About Clastix

Clastix builds infrastructure software that helps enterprises run Kubernetes more efficiently at scale. Its open-source project, Kamaji, provides the foundation for hosted control planes, while kMetal extends that foundation with commercial capabilities for fleet-scale operations. Trusted by organisations that include Fastweb, NVIDIA, and Mistral, Clastix is focused on helping platform teams reduce infrastructure overhead, simplify operations, and support business growth with less complexity.

Press Contact

Jason Mashak, CLASTIX Head of Marketing

jason@clastix.io

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RELATED:

• Read our funding announcement “Clastix Receives Seed Investment to Help Enterprises Control and Scale Cloud Infrastructures”
• Read our Founder and CEO Adriano Pezzuto’s article “Why We Received €2.9M to Build AI's Infrastructure Layer”