Since the Model Context Protocol (MCP) was introduced in November 2024 as an open standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, it has grown into a broad ecosystem spanning public servers, major AI platforms, and cloud providers. MCP now powers more than 10,000 public servers; is integrated into products such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Visual Studio Code; and has deployment support from AWS, Cloudflare, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
Anthropic continues to invest in MCP through capabilities such as the Claude connector directory, Tool Search, and Programmatic Tool Calling, all aimed at managing thousands of tools efficiently in production-scale agent workflows. Plus, the recent specification release introduced features like asynchronous operations, statelessness, server identity, and official extensions, while community-driven infrastructure has expanded to include an official Registry and SDKs in major programming languages with tens of millions of monthly downloads.
Agentic AI Foundation
Anthropic announced on December 9 it is donating MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation, a directed fund under the Linux Foundation co-founded by Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI, with support from Google, Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, and Bloomberg. The Linux Foundation brings decades of experience in stewarding critical open-source projects and provides the neutral governance needed for a standard intended to be vendor-agnostic and globally adopted.
Within the Agentic AI Foundation, MCP will be joining goose by Block and AGENTS.md by OpenAI as founding projects, creating a cluster of initiatives focused on agentic AI infrastructure and standards. The MCP governance model will remain community-driven, with project maintainers continuing to emphasize transparent decision-making and broad contributor input, even as formal stewardship moves under the foundation.
Intent Behind Donation
Anthropic positions open-source software as essential to a secure and innovative agentic AI ecosystem and frames the donation as a way to guarantee MCP remains a neutral standard rather than a single-vendor asset. The move is a long-term commitment to collaborative development across companies that would otherwise compete on products while needing to share plumbing for tools, connectors, and governance.
The Agentic AI Foundation’s remit spans strategic investment, community building, and shared standards development, with a stated goal of guiding agentic AI to evolve transparently and in the public interest. For MCP specifically, foundation sponsorship is expected to encourage new projects, implementations, and infrastructure built on top of the protocol while preserving its open, community-led character.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Agentic AI is moving onto shared, open plumbing. As MCP becomes a foundation-backed standard, ERP and enterprise providers gain a more predictable way to connect AI agents to core systems without fragmenting into competing proprietary integration frameworks. This will influence how product teams expose business processes, data, and APIs to AI assistants across ERP and adjacent platforms.
Neutral governance lowers integration risk for enterprise programs. With MCP operating under Linux Foundation stewardship, CIOs, enterprise architects, and systems integrators (SIs) can treat the protocol more like other open infrastructure standards, shaping long-term integration and tooling decisions around a neutral, multi-vendor ecosystem rather than a single provider’s roadmap.
Collaboration around agentic AI will accelerate. By grouping MCP with projects like goose and AGENTS.md under the Agentic AI Foundation, major players now have a shared interest in interoperable agent standards, which will shape how ERP vendors, SIs, and independent software vendors design agents, extensions, and connectors for complex enterprise environments.
