The Agentic AI Foundation marks a major milestone in the evolution of agentic systems, and OpenAI’s decision to co-found this initiative under the Linux Foundation signals a decisive move toward open, interoperable, and production-ready AI infrastructure. As agentic AI transitions from experimentation to real-world deployment, this new foundation aims to ensure that the technology grows transparently, safely, and without fragmentation.
The Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) brings together OpenAI, Anthropic, Block, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare to build common standards for next-generation AI agents. This cross-industry collaboration highlights the urgency of addressing interoperability challenges while providing a neutral home for long-term ecosystem stewardship.
The rise of agentic systems has been rapid. Developers are now using AI agents to automate workflows, support customers, assist with development tasks, and manage complex processes. However, as these agents enter enterprise environments, inconsistencies across tools and platforms become more visible. Interoperability is no longer an ideal; it is a requirement for scale, safety, and reliability.
Open standards help solve this. With shared conventions, developers avoid vendor lock-in and can trust that agents behave predictably across different environments. By reducing incompatibility, standards accelerate innovation and make it easier for organizations to deploy agents responsibly. These principles underpin the vision of the AAIF, which aims to bring neutrality and transparency to an increasingly complex ecosystem.
OpenAI’s decision to contribute AGENTS.md to the AAIF is central to this effort. Originally created to support Codex-based development, AGENTS.md provided a consistent way for AI agents to understand project-specific instructions such as coding conventions, build processes, and test guidelines. By living alongside files like README.md, the format offered a lightweight but effective method for ensuring agent predictability across repositories.
What started as an internal solution quickly gained momentum. Since August 2025, more than 60,000 open-source repositories and agent frameworks, including GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Devin, Gemini CLI, VS Code, and others have adopted AGENTS.md. This widespread adoption demonstrated clear demand for a universal, vendor-neutral specification. Migrating AGENTS.md to the AAIF ensures that it evolves openly and remains accessible to the entire developer community.
The AAIF is not limited to AGENTS.md. Each co-founder is contributing core infrastructure: Anthropic is donating the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a widely used standard for agent-tool interoperability, while Block is providing Goose, its open agent framework. Together, these contributions form a powerful foundation for an open agentic ecosystem.
Over the past year, OpenAI has also invested heavily in building agentic infrastructure in the open. The Agents SDK, Apps SDK, Agentic Commerce Protocol, and the gpt-oss models are examples of building blocks that have enabled developers to adopt open agent workflows. These tools have supported millions of real-world tasks, including the merging of more than two million pull requests through Codex-powered automation alone.
Additionally, OpenAI’s early role in shaping the Model Context Protocol helped set the stage for a broader shift toward agentic interoperability. With MCP now supported across connectors, apps, and platforms, the community already has a strong baseline for multi-agent and multi-tool collaboration. The AAIF will take this further by unifying standards and encouraging continued cross-industry contribution.
The Linux Foundation’s stewardship provides credibility and long-term governance. For decades, it has guided open-source projects such as Kubernetes, PyTorch, Node.js, and the Linux kernel itself. Its involvement ensures that no single company dictates the evolution of core agentic infrastructure, a crucial requirement as AI becomes more deeply embedded in global industry and society.
The creation of the Agentic AI Foundation arrives at a critical moment. Agents are beginning to handle sensitive tasks, manage dynamic workflows, and interface directly with enterprise systems.
As responsibility increases, so does the need for consistent, transparent, and community-driven standards. Without these safeguards, the ecosystem risks diverging into incompatible and potentially unsafe practices.
By launching the AAIF, OpenAI and its partners aim to establish the baseline conventions needed to support safe growth. Through open standards, shared protocols, and collaborative investment, the foundation creates a neutral ground where developers, researchers, enterprises, and independent contributors can shape the future of agentic AI.
The AAIF invites participation from across the community. Whether you are building tools, designing agents, or researching new interaction models, the foundation offers a path to contribute to meaningful, interoperable progress.
As agentic systems continue to mature, this collective effort will help ensure that innovation remains accessible, transparent, and beneficial to all. For more updates on the world of AI, stay curious and explore the latest developments on ainewstoday.org, your go-to source for timely AI news and insights.
