Google has handed its A2A (Agent2Agent) protocol to the Linux Foundation: it has joined the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) – placing it alongside Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) under a neutral, vendor-agnostic roof.
What A2A is
A2A is an open standard for communication and collaboration between independent AI agents – across system and vendor boundaries. Together with MCP (agent-to-tool), A2A (agent-to-agent) forms the de facto protocol stack of the agent world.
A neutral home
The AAIF, hosted by the Linux Foundation, now counts more than 250 members, including AWS, Anthropic, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. Founding members of the A2A project include AWS, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow; more than 100 companies back it.
Why it matters
By handing it to a neutral foundation, A2A will be developed independently of any single company – an important step toward open, interoperable AI agents. The move was announced on 20 August 2026.
Sources: Google Developers Blog, Axios.
