fidzu : cms

One year ago, at Drupal Developer Days in Leuven, something special happened.

The Drupal AI Initiative was not officially launched yet. That would happen later, in June. But Leuven was where the spark happened. It was where the first real momentum came together. Where conversations turned into commitment. Where a shared belief became a shared plan.

Five companies stepped up to kickstart the initiative: Dropsolid, Acquia, 1xINTERNET, FreelyGive, and Salsa Digital. Together, they helped turn an ambitious idea into the beginning of a movement.

Now, one year later, as we gather again at Drupal Developer Days in Athens, we celebrate one year since that moment of conception.

Leuven was where the initiative was kickstarted. June was when it officially went live. Athens is where we celebrate how far it has come.

A year of momentum, collaboration, and delivery

The Drupal AI Initiative was created with a bold ambition: to help Drupal become the leading open source CMS for AI-powered digital experiences.

But from the beginning, this was never just about adding AI features.

It was about building AI into Drupal in a way that reflects the values of the Drupal community: open, flexible, responsible, transparent, and collaborative. It was about giving organizations the tools to innovate with AI while keeping control over governance, content, security, editorial workflows, and long-term digital strategy.

Over the past year, the initiative has grown from a spark in Leuven into one of the most ambitious collaborative efforts in Drupal's history.

What has been delivered?

Since the official launch of the Drupal AI Initiative, the team has made major progress. The amount of installs is growing significantly, 13980 at the time of writing. Adoption is accelerating. According to shared data we're growing at about 260 sites per week and accelerating.

This is only the sites that share numbers, the real share is much higher.

Growing numbers of Drupal AI Partners

Between Drupal Con Vienna and Chicago, the initiative added 12 new partners, a total of 34, representing a 50% increase in participation. We are on track to match this growth in support between now and DrupalCon Rotterdam, a key goal for this year.

Delivering capabilities at scale

The initiative also successfully established and executed the delivery management RFP process, putting important operational frameworks in place, including:

• Partner expectations documentation
• Onboarding processes
• Development sprint processes
• Contribution tracking
• Team planning sheets
• Weekly status reporting

These may sound like operational details, but they are what make collaboration at scale possible. They help turn enthusiasm into structure, and structure into delivery.

The Drupal AI Initiative has become the largest multi-company collaboration in Drupal community history.

- Dries Buytaert

The initiative is now actively funding critical roles across multiple organizations, including product management, innovation management, technical leadership, and program management. This marks a major milestone: the Drupal AI Initiative has become the largest multi-company collaboration in Drupal community history.

The 2026 roadmap was finalised earlier this year, informed by customer demand and industry insight. Delivery is actively underway.

At the same time, marketing efforts have been elevated to position Drupal as the leading AI-powered open source CMS globally, supported by ongoing storytelling and visibility through the Drupal AI Initiative blog.

Significant rise contribution

Focused effort on strategically important features, combined with a growing number of partners committing resources and strong community participation, has driven a significant increase in momentum and impact.

The tag clouds below visually represent the many Drupal community members who in the past 12 months have contributed to the AI Initiative (sized according to number of fixed issues worked on). Includes code and non code contributions.

The following organizations have also contributed to the Drupal AI Initiative in the past year.

Marketing Drupal AI

From small beginnings with Paul Johnson and Frederik Wouters taking on marketing, we now have a cross disciplinary high performing team with 10 leads across areas of specialization.

Focussing on introducing Drupal to new audiences the emphasis has been on webinars, participating in external events and organising major new customer facing events of our own. These include Drupal AI Summit Paris and New York City (14th May 2026), The AI Summit London (10-11 June 2026) and the latest Enterprise AI Summit Rotterdam (28 September 2026).

Our work has included facilitating Southwark Council, London, winning Digital Leaders AI Impact Award 2026, producing video case studies and highlighting major new AI features announced during the DriesNote with social video content. All these activities have substantially raised Drupal's profile to a wider audience.

Building toward Rotterdam

The next major milestone is already taking shape.

In Rotterdam, the initiative will launch an exclusive Drupal Enterprise AI event, available only to Drupal AI Initiative partners. The event will bring together European decision-makers aboard the SS Rotterdam for peer networking, customer case studies, and strategic conversations about building AI-powered content management solutions with Drupal.

Participation in this event is limited to partners who join the Drupal AI Initiative by June 30.

That creates a powerful moment for companies that want to be part of Drupal's AI future. The initiative is scaling, the roadmap is active, the team is growing, and the opportunity to help shape what comes next is open now.

A strong foundation for what comes next

The Drupal AI Initiative is in a strong position.

With $380,000 in cash and $1.5 million in in-kind contributions, more than 50 contributors from partners, the initiative has the resources and commitment needed to continue scaling. The plan is to onboard an additional 12 partners by Rotterdam, further strengthening the team and accelerating delivery.

The message is clear: You counted on Drupal AI, and we delivered. Now we want to create more efficiency and scale.

That is what this next phase is about. More delivery. More visibility. More impact.

Thank you to the people who made this possible

This milestone belongs to many people.

It belongs to everyone who joined those early conversations in Leuven.

It belongs to Frederik Wouters, who brought the right people together at the right moment and helped create the spark that started it all.

It belongs to the five companies that kickstarted the initiative: Dropsolid, Acquia, 1xINTERNET, FreelyGive, and Salsa Digital.

It belongs to every partner, contributor, sponsor, strategist, developer, product thinker, marketer, and community member who has helped move this initiative forward.

And it belongs to the wider Drupal community, whose openness and willingness to collaborate make initiatives like this possible.

You can still join

The Drupal AI Initiative is growing, and companies can still become part of it.

If your organization believes in the future of Drupal, if you want to help shape responsible AI in open source, or if you want to be part of the group building the next generation of AI-powered content management, now is the time to join.

Become part of the 34 makers already helping to build Drupal's AI future.

To join the Drupal AI Initiative as an organization and become a partner, contact Dominique at dominique@dropsolid.com.

From Leuven to Athens, this has been an incredible first year.

And the best part? We are only just getting started!