The Agentic AI Foundation has added 97 new members, including Circle, JPMorgan Chase, Huawei, American Express, Akamai, Red Hat and UiPath, in a major expansion that signals autonomous AI agents are moving from theory toward production-grade infrastructure. Following the latest intake, the foundation now counts 146 member organizations.
The announcement was made on Feb. 24 at the Linux Foundation Member Summit in Napa, California. According to the release, the new intake includes 18 Gold Members and 79 Silver Members. The nonprofit, vendor-neutral organization was launched under the Linux Foundation on Dec. 9, 2025, with the mission of developing open and interoperable standards for agentic AI systems capable of planning, reasoning, using tools and taking action independently.
Building standards before autonomous agents scale
Agentic AI marks a step beyond chat-based assistants, describing software systems that can execute complex tasks in live environments. The foundation was formed with backing from OpenAI, Anthropic and Block, alongside support from AWS, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google and Microsoft. Its central goal is to prevent fragmentation and vendor lock-in before autonomous agents become deeply embedded across finance, healthcare, software development and other sectors.
Three open-source projects formed the foundation’s early technical base. Anthropic contributed the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data. Block donated goose, an extensible agent framework, while OpenAI contributed AGENTS.md, a markdown-based standard meant to provide coding agents with consistent context across repositories. These projects were placed under neutral governance to support community-led development rather than direct corporate control. The report notes that MCP alone already supports thousands of integrations and has been adopted across major AI platforms.
Why Circle’s participation matters for crypto and fintech
Among the new members, Circle’s addition stands out because it links programmable finance to the emerging agentic software stack. The implication is significant: in the future, AI systems may not only reason and act, but also transact using internet-native financial rails.
Li Fan, Circle’s Chief Technology and AI Officer, said that as software increasingly coordinates economic activity, open standards and trusted financial infrastructure become essential. He added that Circle views programmable, internet-native money as foundational to this shift and as a base layer for the emerging agentic economy. Fan also emphasized that stablecoins enable automated systems to move value globally and in real time, and said Circle’s membership reflects its commitment to open collaboration and interoperable infrastructure.
Open governance becomes an infrastructure question
Governance of the foundation is led by a board chaired by AWS executive David Nalley, who has been tasked with steering strategy while maintaining neutrality among competing participants. The membership structure includes several tiers, with Platinum backers such as AWS, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. The model mirrors earlier Linux Foundation efforts that helped standardize core infrastructure such as Linux and Kubernetes.
The rapid rise to 146 members suggests broad industry agreement that autonomous agents will need shared rules if they are expected to authenticate, coordinate, transact and execute tasks across platforms. The announcement also cited research showing that 89% of organizations adopting AI rely on open-source infrastructure, reinforcing the case for shared governance. For crypto and financial technology observers, Circle’s move sharpens a key question: if AI agents gain access to stablecoin-based settlement, the foundations of an “agentic economy” may start taking shape much sooner than expected.