The Linux Foundation's influence continues to expand across the open source landscape. The organization now hosts critical projects spanning Linux kernel development, cloud infrastructure, and AI.
Their reach extends to over 900 open source projects, with these powering much of the modern internet and enterprise infrastructure.
The foundation has now brought together major tech companies for the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF). This new umbrella organization aims to advance autonomous AI systems through open collaboration.
Agentic AI Foundation Has Some Big Goals
The organization provides neutral governance for developing agentic AI technologies. If you didn't know, Agentic AI refers to autonomous systems that can make decisions and coordinate actions independently. This is a major technological shift from conversational AI assistants to agents that can execute complex tasks.
The foundation launches with three major open source project contributions. Each addresses different aspects of building reliable AI agent systems:
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) comes from Anthropic. The protocol enables AI models to connect with external tools, data sources, and applications. The company released MCP back in November 2024, and it has since been adopted by major AI platforms, including Claude, Cursor, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, VS Code, and ChatGPT.
- goose is Block's contribution to the foundation. The open source framework provides a local-first environment for building AI agents. It combines language models with extensible tools and MCP-based integration.
- AGENTS.md comes from OpenAI. This markdown-based standard gives AI coding agents consistent project-specific guidance. The simple format helps agents work reliably across different repositories and build systems.
The Linux Foundation aims to ensure these technologies are developed transparently, where open governance prevents vendor lock-in and promotes interoperability across different AI systems.
Eight 'Platinum' members anchor the Agentic AI Foundation with $350,000 memberships each. These include Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
The foundation also includes 18 'Gold' members ($200,000 each) and 23 'Silver' members ($10,000 each). An 'Associate' tier is available at no cost for approved non-profit, academic, and government entities.
Speaking on the occasion, Jim Zemlin, the CEO of the Linux Foundation, added that:
We are seeing AI enter a new phase, as conversational systems shift to autonomous agents that can work together. Within just one year, MCP, AGENTS.md and goose have become essential tools for developers building this new class of agentic technologies.
Bringing these projects together under the AAIF ensures they can grow with the transparency and stability that only open governance provides. The Linux Foundation is proud to serve as the neutral home where they will continue to build AI infrastructure the world will rely on.
Organizations interested in membership can visit the AAIF members page for details on benefits and enrollment. The foundation's GitHub organization will host the contributed projects as they transition to community governance.
