The Digester

Linux Foundation launches OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation for open source RAN

Mar 6th 2026

The Linux Foundation has formed the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation to build and govern an open source CU/DU software-defined RAN platform with industry, operator and academic partners to speed AI-native 5G and early 6G development.

  • Announced at Mobile World Congress 2026, the foundation will host the OCUDU project and shared CI/CD/CT assets for CU and DU software.
  • The goal is to create an open source, AI native CU/DU reference stack to accelerate 5G deployments and early 6G innovation.
  • Founding members include AMD, AT&T, DeepSig, Ericsson, Nokia, NVIDIA, SoftBank, SRS, Verizon, 21 other companies and 17 research institutions.
  • Initial OCUDU software was funded by the National Spectrum Consortium and FutureG and developed by DeepSig and SRS.
  • The foundation will provide reference architectures, conformance tooling and integration blueprints to help scale Open RAN to production.
  • Universities and national labs will join to support research, reproducible testing and workforce development.

Sources

ocudu.org