How Linux Foundation Unites Open Standards for Agentic AI

Agentic AI – the big, bold instrument that has quickly joined the modern developer toolkit – derives its power from its capacity to operate external platforms, tools and systems.

Doing so safely, securely and efficiently across a wide array of platforms requires all agentic AI tools to play by the same rules.

It is precisely to craft those rules – and to ensure this critical capability advances in the open – that AI leaders came together to launch the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation umbrella.

“The technology that will define the next decade, that promises to be the biggest engine of economic growth since the Internet, can either remain closed and proprietary for the benefit of few or be driven by open standards, open protocols and open access for the benefit of all,” says Manik Surtani, Head of Open Source at Block. 

“By establishing the AAIF, Block and this group of industry leaders are taking a stand for openness.”

What is the Agentic AI Foundation?

Co-founded by AI giants OpenAI, Anthropic and Block – and housed under the Linux Foundation – the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) pledges to steward open, interoperable infrastructure for building agentic systems.

Launched with the backing of AWS, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Cloudflare and other heavyweights, AAIF aims to prevent ecosystem fragmentation as AI agents enter large-scale production.

AAIF will establish a framework for AI agents to evolve transparently in the public interest – through shared investment, open development and community-led standards.

An open and transparent base for agent development also ensures that no single company steers the direction of foundational agentic AI infrastructure.

MCP, Goose and AGENTS.md: The open standards powering AI agent interoperability

The inaugural projects of the Open AI foundation includes AGENTS.md from OpenAI, Model Context Protocol (MCP) from Anthropic and Goose from Block. 

“Within just one year, MCP, AGENTS.md and goose have become essential tools for developers building this new class of agentic technologies,” says Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. 

“Bringing these projects together under the AAIF ensures they can grow with the transparency and stability that only open governance provides. 

“The Linux Foundation is proud to serve as the neutral home where they will continue to build AI infrastructure the world will rely on.”

Anthropic’s MCP: The model context protocol driving agentic AI collaboration

Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), launched just a year ago, has matured into the universal standard for connecting AI models to external tools.

Adopted by Claude, Cursor, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, VS Code and ChatGPT – and backed by more than 10,000 published servers – MCP began as an internal effort to solve integration challenges faced by Anthropic’s own teams.

“When we open sourced it in November 2024, we hoped other developers would find it as useful as we did,” says Mike Krieger, Chief Product Officer at Anthropic. 

“A year later, it's become the industry standard for connecting AI systems to data and tools, used by developers building with the most popular agentic coding tools and enterprises deploying on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. 

“Donating MCP to the Linux Foundation as part of the AAIF ensures it stays open, neutral and community-driven as it becomes critical infrastructure for AI.”

Why OpenAI donates AGENTS.md for AI agents

AGENTS.md – a lightweight Markdown file – gives AI coding agents a simple, predictable, interoperable standard to operate reliably across repositories and tools.

Initially developed inside OpenAI to ensure agents behave predictably when interacting with other interfaces, it has seen rapid adoption, with more than 600,000 open source projects using it.

“OpenAI has long believed that shared, community-driven protocols are essential to a healthy agentic ecosystem, which is why we’ve open sourced key building blocks like the Codex CLI, the Agents SDK and now AGENTS.md,” says Nick Cooper, Member of the Technical Staff at OpenAI.

Goose: Local-first Al agent framework for trusted agentic workflows

Goose is an open-source, local-first agentic AI framework from Block that combines language models, extensible tools and MCP-based integration to offer a trusted environment for building agentic AI workflows.

Released in early 2025, Goose provides practical infrastructure for safe, consistent agentic AI development.

“Establishing the AAIF and contributing Goose to it ensures that agentic AI remains shaped by the community and driven by merit,” Manik says.

“Together, we're building the infrastructure for an AI future that benefits everyone.”