OpenAI and Anthropic join hands to standardize AI agents
10 Dec 2025

The Linux Foundation has announced the formation of a new group, the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), to prevent AI agents from becoming fragmented and incompatible.

The foundation will serve as a neutral platform for open-source projects related to AI agents.

The launch is backed by donations from major players in the industry, including Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI.

Contributions from tech giants
Industry support

The AAIF has received major contributions from leading tech companies.

Anthropic has donated its Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standard for connecting models and agents to tools and data.

Block has contributed Goose, an open-source agent framework, while OpenAI has brought AGENTS.md, a simple instruction file developers can add to a repository to guide AI coding tools.

AAIF's mission and vision
Future outlook

The AAIF's mission is to establish shared standards for AI agents, ensuring their trustworthiness at scale.

OpenAI engineer Nick Cooper emphasized the importance of multiple protocols for effective communication and collaboration between different agents and systems.

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin stressed that the aim is to avoid a future dominated by "closed wall" proprietary stacks, where tool connections, agent behavior, and orchestration are restricted by a few platforms.

Funding and control
Financial structure

The AAIF's structure is funded through a "directed fund," allowing companies to donate money via membership dues.

However, Zemlin argues that this funding does not equal control; project roadmaps are set by technical steering committees, and no single member gets unilateral say over direction.

The real test for AAIF will be whether it becomes real infrastructure or just another industry logo alliance.