When Mazin Gilbert became the Agentic AI Foundation’s (AAIF) first Executive Director in April 2026, he knew the technology was already critical, but he didn’t foresee just how fast it would grow and scale across industries.
During a conversation with The Stack at the AAIF’s first AGNTCon and MCPCon Europe in mid-September, he said the foundation has added an average of one member company per day since it launched in December 2025 as the new home for Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), highlighting the speed of development for the agentic AI sector.
“It’s like a plane is already in the air and we're changing the engines as it goes, and that's how it feels. Companies are… deploying as the standards evolve,” he said.
“They're unplugging and putting the standard there and, as this plane is flying, they're finding issues and they're coming back to us and discussing and debating and defining solutions and putting it back. So it's scary. But it's also very exciting.”
