CIQ

CIQ, legally Ctrl IQ, Inc., is an enterprise infrastructure software company headquartered in Reno, Nevada. It is the founding commercial sponsor of Rocky Linux and develops and supports a full computing stack spanning the operating system kernel through workload orchestration for Linux, high-performance computing (HPC), and AI workloads. The company markets nine enterprise products, including RLC+ (a free, GPU-ready Rocky Linux build with pre-integrated NVIDIA and AMD drivers), RLC Pro (enterprise Rocky Linux with up to ten years of support, FIPS 140-3 cryptography, and direct bug fixes), RLC Pro Hardened (DISA STIG-hardened, FIPS 140-3 validated builds with CAVP-certified post-quantum algorithms for CMMC and CNSA 2.0 requirements), RLC Pro AI (an OS layer tuned for GPU-accelerated AI and ML), Fuzzball (a control plane for AI and HPC orchestration across on-premises and multi-cloud environments), Warewulf Pro (stateless bare-metal cluster provisioning), Ascender Pro (enterprise automation built on AWX/Ansible with compliance reporting), Apptainer (the open source HPC container platform, now a Linux Foundation project), and CIQ Bridge (extended CentOS 7 support with CVE remediation through 2028).

Beyond software subscriptions, CIQ sells enterprise support with direct access to Linux and HPC engineers, custom training delivered in person or virtually, and consulting covering architecture, deployment, optimization, and compliance. The company positions its stack around "sovereign AI" — private LLM inference, RAG, and chat deployments that keep data on customer-owned on-premises or private-cloud infrastructure — as well as integrated HPC platforms combining Rocky Linux, Warewulf Pro, Apptainer, and Fuzzball. CIQ states that CUDA Toolkit, DOCA-OFED, NVIDIA Data Center drivers, AMD Instinct drivers, and ROCm ship pre-integrated and validated in every RLC image, and describes itself as the first Enterprise Linux authorized to ship the complete NVIDIA AI and networking stack.

Founding story

CIQ was founded in April 2020 in Reno, Nevada by Gregory Kurtzer, the original creator of CentOS, Warewulf, and Singularity (now Apptainer), with the aim of building a modern, cloud-native computing platform for performance-intensive workloads. Kurtzer developed Singularity in 2015 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to let researchers run software portably on shared research systems where Docker was considered too risky; it spread to nearly every national lab and supercomputing center within months. In December 2020, after Red Hat announced CentOS would shift upstream of RHEL, Kurtzer's public call to rebuild it drew more than 10,000 volunteers within six weeks and launched Rocky Linux as a community-governed CentOS successor.

Business model

CIQ monetizes open source infrastructure software through commercial product tiers and services. A free tier (RLC+) is offered alongside paid enterprise editions (RLC Pro, RLC Pro Hardened, RLC Pro AI) that add long-term support, FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography, hardened builds, direct bug fixes, and pinned kernel versions with backported CVE patches. Complementary commercial products cover orchestration (Fuzzball), cluster provisioning (Warewulf Pro), automation (Ascender Pro), and extended CentOS 7 maintenance (CIQ Bridge). Enterprise support, custom training, and consulting services are sold alongside the products, and a customer portal supports self-service purchasing, catalog browsing, support ticketing, and a CVE dashboard.

Revenue comes from commercial subscriptions and support contracts for its Enterprise Linux and orchestration products, plus paid training and consulting engagements; a free RLC+ tier and open source projects such as Rocky Linux and Apptainer serve as the top of the funnel. Products can be purchased self-service through the CIQ portal.

Traction

CIQ reports 2.75 million-plus actively deployed Rocky Linux instances worldwide (per EPEL telemetry), about 250,000 average monthly Rocky Linux downloads, nine enterprise products, and adoption of its supported technologies by 90% of the largest enterprises. Referenced customers and users include the University of Montana, a global high-frequency trading firm, a Fortune 50 cloud hosting service, and FYR Bio, whose director of software and data analytics cited 100x pipeline throughput using Fuzzball. Warewulf Pro won a 2025 HPCwire Readers' and Editors' Choice Award.

Latest developments

In January 2026 CIQ launched the CIQ Startup Program, giving VC-backed startups from seed through Series C six months of free access to its AI infrastructure stack followed by up to 80% discounts for up to two years, bundling RLC-AI, Fuzzball, RLC-Hardened, and direct engineering support. For 2026 the company lists the introduction of the CIQ Linux Kernel and the release of Fuzzball 4.0 for multi-cloud AI and HPC orchestration. Other recent items include Bjorn Hovland's December 2025 promotion to President, a Warewulf Pro HPCwire award in November 2025, the launch of a partner portal, and self-service purchasing in the customer portal.