It uses cluster-api to provision clusters. It's very cool and isn't a VMware thing. It's open source, and you can easily run it on regular k8s clusters.
Yes it is a community project but VMware engineers play a big part in maintaining as it is foundational to the kubernetes product that VMware sells. Open source does not mean it runs by itself.
https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-vsph...