From Hyperscalers to Neoclouds: Why Cloud Providers Are Standardizing on Cilium

Cilium has become the de facto standard CNI for Kubernetes across all major cloud tiers — hyperscalers (Google, Amazon, Microsoft), AI neoclouds (CoreWeave, Crusoe, Nebius), and European/sovereign clouds (OVHcloud, Scaleway, Hetzner). The post maps 17+ providers and explains the four key reasons: eBPF-based performance at scale (Microsoft saw 30% latency reduction at 16k pods; Hetzner saw 105% more RPS), identity-based multi-tenant security, built-in observability via Hubble, and Cilium's breadth as a full networking platform (Gateway API, Cluster Mesh, kube-proxy replacement, Tetragon runtime security). The author argues Cilium is becoming the Linux of cloud networking — a universal abstraction layer that makes skills and configurations portable across providers.