Google is developing Orphaned VMs, a technology that allows virtual machines to continue running uninterrupted on preserved physical CPUs while the host Linux kernel undergoes live updates through the Live Update Orchestrator. The RFC patches, currently at 46 patches and led by Pasha Tatashin, introduce infrastructure for vCPU state preservation and a Caretaker bare-metal layer to handle VM operations during host reboots, though the work remains early-stage and not yet production-ready.