OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block Team Up to Launch Agentic AI Foundation for Open-Standard AI Agents

Details

• OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block have established the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation to promote open standards for agentic AI—autonomous systems capable of planning, acting, and coordinating with minimal human oversight.
• The foundation’s founders will contribute engineering expertise, reference code, and an initial donation from OpenAI to kickstart the initiative.
• AAIF will adopt vendor-neutral governance, similar to Linux Foundation projects like the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
• Working groups are set to address safety measures, authentication, audit logging, and to deliver a draft agent-to-agent messaging protocol by mid-2026.
• AAIF invites participation from companies, universities, and regulators to prevent proprietary fragmentation in agent platforms.
• The initiative responds to the growing popularity of open-source agent frameworks like LangChain and Autogen, aiming to codify industry best practices.

Impact

AAIF’s launch challenges Big Tech’s closed AI stacks by encouraging open collaboration, compelling companies like Google and Microsoft to weigh the risk of incompatibility. Standardized protocols can accelerate compliance with global AI regulations and lower barriers for startups, potentially reshaping the competitive landscape. This move mirrors how disruptive open standards like Kubernetes and OpenAPI reshaped their respective domains.