As artificial intelligence evolves, the need for interoperable, agent-driven systems has become pressing. A standard for AI agents to “talk” to each other is needed. AGNTCY directly addresses the lack of standardization hindering multi-agent collaboration. In March 2025, Cisco took a decisive step toward shaping the future of artificial intelligence by open-sourcing AGNTCY.
The AGNTCY initiative marks a landmark in building foundational infrastructure for AI agents to collaborate, discover each other, and operate securely across diverse organizational and technical environments. Developed in partnership with LangChain and Galileo—who joined as core maintainers—AGNTCY’s community rapidly expanded to include prominent contributors such as Glean and LlamaIndex.
Solving the Infrastructure Challenge for AI Agents
Operating as a “DNS for agents,” the AGNTCY framework allows agents to be discoverable and their capabilities to be understood in a standardized manner. The framework equips agents with cryptographically secure identities, enabling them to prove authenticity and interact seamlessly across vendors and platforms. This protocol ensures efficient, secure, and multi-modal communication between agents, supporting both human-in-the-loop processes and quantum-safe security features.
A Foundation for the Internet of Agents
Shortly after its open-sourcing, Cisco contributed AGNTCY to the Linux Foundation. This move ushered in rapid ecosystem growth—by mid-2025, over 75 companies had pledged their support. Early and prominent backers include major technology vendors such as Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Red Hat, who were among the formative members anchoring the initiative. The roster rapidly expanded to encompass a broad array of contributors working across the AI and infrastructure ecosystem. Notable companies actively participating include LangChain, Galileo, Glean, LlamaIndex, AG2, Boomi, Browserbase, Komodor, Traceloop, Aviz Networks, Weaviate, and many others committed to open standards for multi-agent systems.
Open governance under the Linux Foundation ensures broad-based participation, transparency, and fosters industry-wide standards, helping to prevent silos and fragmentation that could impede collaboration among next-generation AI agents. This has made AGNTCY the top candidate for a standardized Agentic AI framework.
Compatibility and interoperability are central tenets of AGNTCY. The platform is designed to work seamlessly with leading agent frameworks such as Agent2Agent (A2A) and Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP). This approach enables dynamic, cross-platform, and cross-organization agent ecosystems, advancing the vision of an “Internet of Agents” analogous to how foundational protocols enabled the World Wide Web.
