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
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Anthropic said on March 5, 2026 that it had received a supply-chain risk designation letter from the Department of War. The company says the scope is narrow, plans to challenge the action in court, and will continue transition support for national-security users.
Claude Code Security, announced February 20, uses AI reasoning to scan codebases for vulnerabilities and found 500+ undetected bugs in production open-source code. Cybersecurity stocks fell sharply on the news.
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