![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Screenshot-2026-04-21-at-11.22.34-AM-490x319.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Everything connected to the generative AI world moves fast, including AI agents. Take, for example, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that agents use to access data and tools. The adoption rate of MCP is off the charts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But can the new Agentic AI Foundation<\/a> (AAIF) move quickly enough to standardize the entire agentic AI ecosystem, starting with MCP?\u00a0<\/p>\n The buzz at the recent MCP Dev Summit<\/a> shows they are off to a fast start, but significant challenges remain for enterprise adoption with security as the top concern.\u00a0<\/p>\n The AAIF\u2019s mission is to define the open standards for the agentic AI space \u201cthat the whole world will be able to adopt,\u201d AAIF Executive Director Mazen Gilbert told SD Times.\u00a0\u201cWhen you move from experimentation to production, and you have a thousand people doing their own thing and showing you some cool demos and moving to production at scale, you do need an open standard. No one company can define it, and no one company can own it,\u201d Gilbert added.\u00a0<\/p>\n But can the AAIF move fast enough to prevent industry fragmentation? Many organizations and software companies are already resolving key issues with MCP and the broader agentic ecosystem outside of the AAIF.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fast Adoption and Fast Growth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n AAIF has grown to 170 members since it was launched in December, and attracted 1,100 attendees to its recent MCP Dev Summit <\/a>in New York. \u201cNinety-seven new members joined in February alone,\u201d said David Nalley of AWS, AAIF Governing Board Chair in his keynote.\u00a0\u201cAAIF already has seven working groups with more than five hundred participants,\u201d he added. \u201cThe Identity and Trust Working Group has 150 members from 66 organizations.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n At a media roundtable with leading MCP maintainers from Anthropic, AWS, Microsoft, and OpenAI, panelists said that moving the specification to AAIF hasn\u2019t changed much about their work process and that it\u2019s helpful to have the broader perspective the AAIF members bring.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But MCP by itself represents only a part of the agentic AI landscape.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMCP is the seed,\u201d said MCP maintainer Nick Cooper, Technical Staff, OpenAI at the media roundtable. \u201cThe foundation has a broad mandate beyond just MCP.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And even within the scope of the MCP specification itself, organizations are expressing key requirements for enterprise adoption, such as reliability, scalability, governance, and enhanced security.\u00a0The maintainers said they are well aware of enterprise requirements, and AAIF is requesting proposals to sponsor working groups that address them.\u00a0For example, enhanced security improvement is a key requirement for enterprise adoption, said MCP maintainer David Soria Parra, Technical Staff, Anthropic, and co-creator of MCP. \u201cWe\u2019re happy to have AAIF bring the industry together and talk about the right solutions\u201d across the agentic ecosystem.\u00a0<\/p>\n Key Messages from Keynotes\u00a0<\/p>\n In his keynote, Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin talked about the industry\u2019s rapid embrace of AAIF and announced a global event series for the AAIF, as well as expanded AgentCon + MCP Con events<\/a> in Europe and North America in 2026. (The AAIF is a sub-foundation of the Linux Foundation.)\u00a0\u00a0Zemlin also introduced Angie Jones as the new Developer Experience lead for AAIF<\/p>\n