Anthropic Donates MCP to Linux Foundation, USB-C for AI with OpenAI, Microsoft Backing
MCP Becomes Vendor-Neutral Open Standard
Anthropic has donated the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), a directed fund under the Linux Foundation. The foundation is co-founded by Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI, with support from Google, Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, and Bloomberg.
The MCP donation was finalized on December 9, 2025, establishing MCP as a vendor-neutral open standard.
What is MCP?
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard framework introduced by Anthropic in November 2024 to standardize how AI systems integrate and share data with external tools, systems, and data sources.
Often called the USB-C for AI, MCP is a unified protocol that enables AI models to communicate with external tools like databases, search engines, and APIs.
Explosive Adoption
MCP has rapidly become the universal standard protocol for connecting AI models to tools and data:
- Over 10,000 published MCP servers covering everything from developer tools to Fortune 500 deployments
- 97 million monthly SDK downloads across Python and TypeScript
Adoption by Major Players
MCP has been adopted by OpenAI and Microsoft, marking a notable case of industry collaboration where competitors embrace a standard developed by Anthropic.
2026 Roadmap
The Agentic AI Foundation announced the following plans:
- MCP Dev Summit: April 2-3, 2026, in New York City
- TypeScript SDK v2 stable release: Expected in Q1 2026, with native support for asynchronous features
Related Articles
Anthropic said on March 17, 2026 that open source security is becoming more important as AI grows more capable. In its X post, the company said it is donating to the Linux Foundation to help secure the software foundations AI depends on.
At its Code with Claude London event, Anthropic launched self-hosted sandboxes (public beta) and MCP tunnels (research preview) for Claude Managed Agents, enabling enterprises to run AI agents entirely within their own infrastructure without exposing sensitive data.
Anthropic says Project Glasswing used Claude Mythos Preview to surface more than 10,000 high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities. The sharper signal is operational: verification, disclosure, and patching may now lag behind AI-assisted discovery.