The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for open source collaboration. The nonprofit organization hosts critical infrastructure projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, and PyTorch.
Google recently donated the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol to the Linux Foundation. This protocol enables AI agents to communicate and collaborate across different platforms and frameworks.
And now the Linux Foundation welcomes yet another major agent infrastructure project.
What's Happening: Cisco has donated the AGNTCY (pronounced agency) project to the Linux Foundation, bringing another major piece of AI agent infrastructure under neutral governance. The project started as an open source infrastructure for AI agent communication back in March 2025.
Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Red Hat have joined as formative members alongside Cisco. The move puts AGNTCY under neutral governance, similar to how other major open source projects operate. No single vendor controls the direction or development of the infrastructure.
Announcing this, Vijoy Pandey, SVP and GM at Outshift by Cisco, stated that:
Building the foundational infrastructure for the Internet of Agents requires community ownership, not vendor control. The Linux Foundation ensures this critical infrastructure remains neutral and accessible to everyone building multi-agent systems.
What to Expect: AI agents from different companies can't talk to each other right now. Each vendor builds their own systems with different protocols and authentication methods. AGNTCY tackles this with four main components.
There's a discovery system that works like DNS for agents. An identity layer handles authentication between different organizations. A messaging protocol called SLIM handles the actual communication. The fourth piece is observability tools for evaluating and debugging across multi-agent workflows. All of this aims to ensure that agents work together regardless of who built them.
Another thing to keep in mind is that AGNTCY is compatible with the Agent2Agent protocol and Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP).
You will find the source code for the project on GitHub.
Here's why you should opt for It's FOSS Plus Membership:
- Even the biggest players in the Linux world don't care about desktop Linux users. We do. - We don't put informational content behind paywall. Your support keeps it open for everyone. Think of it like 'pay it forward'. - Don't like ads? With the Plus membership, you get an ad-free reading experience. - When millions of AI-generated content is being published daily, you read and learn from real human Linux users. - It costs just $2 a month, less than the cost of your favorite burger.
Become a Plus Member today and join over 300 people in supporting our work.
Sourav Rudra
