The Linux Foundation has created a new open source body as Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block donate their core agent technologies to a neutral home, signalling a major industry push for shared standards and interoperable AI systems.
The Linux Foundation has launched the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), a new open source organisation designed to house the critical technologies that allow AI agents to connect to tools, data, and each other. In a rare moment of alignment, competing AI companies Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block have moved their core agent-related projects into the foundation’s neutral governance model.
Anthropic has contributed the Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenAI has donated AGENTS.md, and Block has added its agent framework, Goose. These contributions shift foundational agentic AI infrastructure from proprietary control into a community-owned standard.
The membership structure underscores the scale of support behind AAIF. Platinum members include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare, while Gold members include Cisco, IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Snowflake. Platinum members receive seats on the AAIF Governing Board, giving Amazon, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI direct oversight.
MCP provides a universal protocol for connecting AI systems to external tools and has seen rapid adoption since its November 2024 release, with over 10,000 MCP servers now deployed. Goose offers a local agent framework capable of writing code, running tests, and managing workflows, while AGENTS.md standardises project-specific guidance for coding agents and is already used across more than 60,000 open source projects.
Mike Krieger, Chief Product Officer at Anthropic, said: “MCP started as an internal project to solve a problem our own teams were facing. When we open sourced it in November 2024, we hoped other developers would find it as useful as we did. A year later, it has become the industry standard for connecting AI systems to data and tools.”
Shawn Edwards, Chief Technology Officer at Bloomberg, added: “MCP provides the essential connective layer required in our work building and deploying agentic AI systems for finance that do far more than simple question-answering. As an open source standard governed by the Linux Foundation, MCP is poised to drive broader adoption and innovation across the financial sector.”
Experts at the recent Open Source Summit pointed to trust, interoperability, and identity as the emerging challenges as agentic systems scale. While issues such as identity, observability, and security remain unresolved, AAIF offers a neutral venue for collaborative progress, reducing vendor lock-in and strengthening long-term stability for organisations building autonomous AI systems.
