--- title: Istio Brings Future Ready Service Mesh to the AI Era... description: Istio announced three major updates at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026: ambient multicluster support in beta (enabling cross-cluster traffic routing... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/istio-brings-future-ready-service-mesh-to-the-ai-era-with-new-ambient-multicluster-gateway-api-infe-fkuzfmlxk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Istio Brings Future Ready Service Mesh to the AI Era with New Ambient Multicluster, Gateway API Inference Extension and More | daily.dev og:description: Istio announced three major updates at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026: ambient multicluster support in beta (enabling cross-cluster traffic routing... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/istio-brings-future-ready-service-mesh-to-the-ai-era-with-new-ambient-multicluster-gateway-api-infe-fkuzfmlxk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/fKuZfmlxk.png og:image:alt: Istio Brings Future Ready Service Mesh to the AI Era with New Ambient Multicluster, Gateway API Inference Extension and More og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Istio Brings Future Ready Service Mesh to the AI Era with New Ambient Multicluster, Gateway API Inference Extension and More **[CNCF](https://daily.dev/sources/cncf)** · 4 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Istio announced three major updates at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026: ambient multicluster support in beta (enabling cross-cluster traffic routing without sidecars), Gateway API Inference Extension in beta (integrating ML inference into mesh traffic flows), and experimental support for agentgateway as part of the Istio data plane. These updates aim to simplify multicluster operations and better support AI inference workloads running on Kubernetes. The releases come as CNCF survey data shows 66% of organizations run GenAI workloads on Kubernetes, but only 7% achieve daily AI deployment velocity. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Announcing Istio 1.28.0](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-istio-1-28-0-clcgh2prz) · Istio · 25 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-inference](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-inference), [#gateway-api](https://daily.dev/tags/gateway-api), [#istio](https://daily.dev/tags/istio), [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#service-mesh](https://daily.dev/tags/service-mesh) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/istio-brings-future-ready-service-mesh-to-the-ai-era-with-new-ambient-multicluster-gateway-api-infe-fkuzfmlxk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Istio Brings Future Ready Service Mesh to the AI Era with New Ambient Multicluster, Gateway API Inference Extension and More","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/istio-brings-future-ready-service-mesh-to-the-ai-era-with-new-ambient-multicluster-gateway-api-infe-fkuzfmlxk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/istio-brings-future-ready-service-mesh-to-the-ai-era-with-new-ambient-multicluster-gateway-api-infe-fkuzfmlxk"},"datePublished":"2026-03-25T08:05:08.639Z","dateModified":"2026-06-04T02:15:15.528Z","description":"Istio announced three major updates at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026: ambient multicluster support in beta (enabling cross-cluster traffic routing...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/2c40461ee31edec1c8fde4ad937eeb66?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/2c40461ee31edec1c8fde4ad937eeb66?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"CNCF","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"CNCF","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/55536a03390741eebd96d2f9b74d2d8d","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/cncf"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/istio-brings-future-ready-service-mesh-to-the-ai-era-with-new-ambient-multicluster-gateway-api-infe-fkuzfmlxk","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-inference,gateway-api,istio,kubernetes,service-mesh","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"CNCF","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/cncf"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Istio Brings Future Ready Service Mesh to the AI Era with New Ambient Multicluster, Gateway API Inference Extension and More"}]} ```