Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It allows you to efficiently manage clusters of containers across multiple hosts, ensuring high availability, load balancing, and fault tolerance. Kubernetes handles tasks such as service discovery, automated rollouts, self-healing, and resource optimization, making it ideal for running complex, distributed applications at scale. It is widely used in modern cloud-native architectures to streamline the management of containerized workloads.