Anthropic has donated its Model Context Protocol (MCP) to a new Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), which will be managed by the Linux Foundation. 

The AAIF brings together three of the biggest open-source projects used to develop AI agents: Anthropic’s MCP, Block’s goose and OpenAI’s agents.MD. 

The AAIF’s platinum members page includes the biggest names in tech.

AWS, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have each put down $350,000 to ensure their “influence over the strategic direction, budget, and approval of new technical projects.”

Open source projects explained:

MCP is: an open standard that connects AI applications to external data sources and tools. The unified interface gives AI agents context by letting them securely access databases, APIs, and services without custom integrations for each connection.

Goose is: an open-source framework for building an AI coding agent to help software developers and engineers. It includes pre-built tools and workflows for agents specific to developer environments so they can execute commands, modify codebases, and use developer tooling.

agents.MD is: also a framework for guiding and building coding agents. Its a format for creating a "README.md" file specifically for agents, rather than humans. Containing more detailed context for coding projects that humans might not need, but agents do, like build steps and tests.

IBM’s AI platform strategy chief Ed Anuff said he was “super excited” at the “industry coming together…” MCP, as he posted on LinkedIn, has “fast become the primary interface between agents, applications, and data.”

Linux Foundation’s Executive Director Jim Zemlim said, “Bringing these projects together under the AAIF ensures they can grow with the transparency and stability that only open governance provides.”

The Linux Foundation said in a press release that AAIF will be “a neutral, open foundation” ensuring agentic AI “evolves transparently, collaboratively, and in ways that advance the adoption of leading open source AI projects.”

How it happened

Block reached out to the Linux Foundation after making goose open source in January 2025 about establishing a vendor-neutral community for the project, the Linux Foundation tells The Stack. Anthropic felt the same about MCP.

"Block and Anthropic felt they were stronger creating a foundation together for goose and MCP, rather than two separate foundations. OpenAI quickly joined as well with AGENTS.md, and momentum just gathered from there," the Linux Foundation says.

The nature of agentic AI means it needs to be build with trust and transparency at its core as it requires multiple systems working together.

"The companies involved all see the big picture and want to make a market here, and that means pulling together to build something for the whole market, like MCP," the Linux Foundation says.

The AAIF will follow a similar set up to the PyTorch Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation and OpenInfra Foundation, according to the Linux Foundation.  

The eight platinum members will receive seats on the governing board, a say in budgeting and new technical projects, and “full voting rights on key governance and policy decisions.”

The new foundation’s gold tier, which is still available for a $200,000 fee, promises the ability to nominate a representative for a shared seat on the board and quarterly meetings with platinum members to discuss the latest developments in open source agentic standards and projects. 

Gold members include the likes of IBM, Salesforce, Cisco and 15 other tech companies, suggesting funding will not be an issue. (Other OSS foundations are suffering financial challenges as corporate sponsorship wanes.)  

According to the Linux Foundation, "no single member can steer things unilaterally. Technical decisions go to project maintainers and steering committees. The Linux Foundation holds the trademarks and governance," adding, "vendor neutrality is part of what makes this whole initiative valuable."

Founding projects

Open source standards MCP, goose and agents.MD, all developed in the last year, have already become canonical tools for engineers building AI agents and will “lay the groundwork for a shared ecosystem of tools, standards, and community-driven innovation,” according to the AAIF statement. 

Anthropic’s chief product officer Mike Krieger said, “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,” adding Anthropic will remain committed to developing MCP. 

OpenAI’s Nick Cooper said the frontier lab has “long believed that shared, community-driven protocols are essential to a healthy agentic ecosystem” and is proud to be building a “more open and trustworthy future for agentic AI.”

The somewhat lesser known founding contributor Block, which donated the open-source tool goose, said in its own statement, “Without collaborative open development, we risk missing the full potential of agentic AI where everyone benefits thanks to open standards, open protocols, and open systems on which other tools are built.”

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