Is there any chance that vendors (like Intel) will care less about the API for accessing their products, as there seems to be more consolidation around API's for running applications like Kubernetes. Intel is a member of the CNCF [1] and seems to be putting money behind it. Am I reading too much into that and is Intel just a big company that puts money in lots of places?
They have an interest in a large server ecosystem in general, with options for running your own infrastructure, because it's a lot more profitable for them to sell server CPUs to many companies that don't have as much options to pressure them on price as e.g. Amazon can, and to get their special features integrated so they can use them as arguments against other CPU vendors. They don't care as much which option wins, so it makes sense to be involved with anything that seems important.
It's probably a little of everything. Intel does put a lot of resources into projects like Kubernetes and other communities adjacent to Linux Foundation / CNCF, but I think they put a lot of money anywhere they see a future for utilizing their products... and I think that gets little abstract, sorta. Or rather, they invest in some things that seem like they're partially related to a lot of their core interests.
Intel's new bread and butter is the server space. They are doing everything possible to make sure they stay on the forefront.
With the slowdown of single threaded scaling Intel knows that performance improvements for consumers in the near future will be increasingly anemic. Servers and ML are two spaces where increasing core counts still makes sense.
[1]: https://www.cncf.io/about/members/