OpenAI, in collaboration with Anthropic and Block, has launched the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation. This initiative aims to foster the development of open, interoperable infrastructure for agentic AI systems as they transition from experimentation to real-world applications. The foundation's primary focus is to ensure long-term support and adoption of AGENTS.md, a simple open format for providing agents with project-specific instructions and context. This format is crucial for enabling AI coding agents to operate reliably across different repositories and toolchains.
The rapid adoption of AI in building more capable agentic systems, from coding assistants to workflow automation and customer service agents, has led to the need for open standards. These standards will make agents safer, easier to build, and more portable, preventing the ecosystem from fragmenting as this new category matures. As agents take on more real-world responsibilities, the cost of fragmentation increases, and without common conventions and neutral governance, agent development risks becoming siloed and incompatible.
OpenAI's contributions to building agentic infrastructure in the open, including the Model Context Protocol (MCP), have laid the groundwork for the AAIF. AGENTS.md, a lightweight Markdown file, addresses the need for a predictable way to find project-specific instructions, such as coding conventions and testing requirements. Since its release, it has been adopted by over 60,000 open-source projects, reflecting a growing alignment around shared, vendor-neutral conventions.
By contributing AGENTS.md to the AAIF, the foundation ensures that developers and enterprises have a portable way to provide agents with the necessary context. The format can evolve openly, with input from various tools and communities, and no single company will control its direction. The AAIF operates as a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization with expertise in stewarding critical open-source projects.
The Agentic AI Foundation is established by OpenAI, Block, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare. It aims to facilitate the transparent, collaborative, and public-interest evolution of agentic AI through shared investment, open development, and community-led standards. The foundation welcomes contributions from tool builders, researchers, enterprises, and individual developers to shape and extend this work.
