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Everest AI today announced that it has offered to donate 50 units of its C1 edge AI server to the Linux Foundation, with delivery planned to coincide with the first wave of customer shipments in Q4 2027. The offer, which is still pending acceptance, reflects Everest's desire to see open-source communities own the same hardware that early adopters will receive. “We believe AI compute should be private, silent, and ownable . The Linux Foundation champions those exact values in software. By offering these units, we're inviting the world's most important open-source institution to partner with us in proving that vision,” said Gabriel Saint-Martin, CEO of Everest.
Each C1 packs 18 Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme cores, 128 GB of unified LPDDR5X memory, and an NPU delivering over 80 TOPS of AI performance in a fanless, 75-watt envelope. Should the Foundation accept, the units would include full access to Everest's TITAN management dashboard and MESHNET mesh networking , providing a distributed, silent AI lab for open-source development and testing.
The Linux Foundation hosts projects critical to the AI ecosystem, from the Linux kernel to PyTorch, Kubernetes, and confidential computing initiatives. Everest believes that placing physical C1 hardware within Foundation labs and events would eliminate reliance on short-lived cloud credits and give maintainers a permanent, high-performance testbed. “Too many open-source AI projects live on borrowed compute. We're offering them a home,” Saint-Martin explained.
The ARM-based, unified-memory architecture of the C1 is tailor-made for edge-native AI. Early access for the Foundation would encourage optimizations in popular frameworks long before general availability, multiplying the impact of the donation.
If accepted, the 50 units could be split across three pillars: 20 servers forming a permanent community cluster for CI/CD, model benchmarking, and kernel development, accessible to approved maintainers; 20 traveling to Linux Foundation events and workshops worldwide; and 10 reserved for a sponsored bounty program that rewards standout open-source contributions specifically built on the C1.
All donated servers would arrive pre-installed with Everest's TITAN management dashboard and MESHNET, giving the Foundation immediate access to the C1's full capabilities. The bounty winners would keep the hardware they develop on, encouraging long-term community-driven projects.
Everest is committed to ensuring the C1 integrates seamlessly with the open-source ecosystem. The company will upstream all hardware enablement code, including SoC support, GPU drivers, and NPU framework, into the mainline Linux kernel, working directly with Linux Foundation fellows. The code will be publicly developed and documented, giving every C1 owner a transparent, maintainable foundation.
While the TITAN management dashboard and MESHNET protocol remain proprietary, Everest will provide full API documentation and integration guides. This approach allows the community to build around the platform while preserving the polished, reliable experience that the C1 is designed to deliver.
The C1 units earmarked for the bounty program come with a $100,000 prize pool. Developers would propose projects, from a one-click Llama 4 deployment to a voice-controlled home automation stack, and earn not only prize money but permanent custody of the C1 they develop on. “We want the community to define what the C1 becomes,” Saint-Martin said. “The best way to do that is to put hardware in creative hands and reward the most impactful work.”
Proposals could be reviewed by a joint panel of Everest engineers and Linux Foundation maintainers, with awards anticipated to be announced at the Open Source Summit North America 2028, contingent on the Foundation's acceptance of the donation.
The proposed timeline mirrors C1 production: early-access board spins are already being evaluated by select kernel developers; beta hardware would ship to the Foundation in Q4 2027 for integration work; the full 50-unit fleet would be delivered on the same day the first paying customers receive their orders, currently planned for December 2027.
Everest has made clear that the offer remains open for the Foundation to accept at any point before the production cut-off date in late Q3 2027, and that it would include three years of priority support at no cost, with hardware replacements, should the offer be accepted.
The announcement has sparked positive discussion in open-source and self-hosted communities. “A permanent C1 cluster I can ssh into 24/7 would radically accelerate our testing cycles,” said a maintainer of a popular local-AI orchestrator. “I really hope the Foundation says yes.”
Pre-order customers praised the transparency of the offer. “Even if the Foundation hasn't accepted yet, it's refreshing to see a hardware company publicly commit to sharing its gear with the open-source world,” one user wrote.
Beyond the specific offer, Everest is exploring a recurring sponsorship model that would allocate a percentage of every future production run to open-source organisations. “Think of it as a tithe for open infrastructure,” Saint-Martin hinted. “If the C1 succeeds, we want the communities that made that success possible to own a piece of it, literally.”
The company confirmed that individual and volume pricing for the C1 remains unchanged, with single-unit reservations starting at $1,999. All pre-ordered hardware will be identical to the units offered to the Foundation, without feature segmentation.
With tens of thousands of pre-orders already on the books and a rapidly growing ecosystem of self-hosted AI practitioners, Everest's open offer to the Linux Foundation signals a new standard for how hardware startups can engage with open-source communities. The company hopes the Foundation will accept the 50 C1 units, turning a gesture of goodwill into a tangible foundation for the next decade of open AI.