July 30, 2025
5 min read
Sander Almekinders
Cisco donates its AGNTCY framework to the Linux Foundation, enabling collaborative AI agents to communicate and work together seamlessly.
Cisco Donates AGNTCY to Linux Foundation: What Does It Mean for the Internet of Agents?
AI agents are emerging rapidly, but ensuring they work together effectively is a challenge. AGNTCY, developed by Cisco’s incubator Outshift, aims to address this by providing a collaborative framework for AI agents. Previously open source, Cisco has now donated the entire AGNTCY stack to the Linux Foundation to foster broader community development under a neutral umbrella. The core idea behind AGNTCY is that while a single AI agent can perform specific tasks well, the real power lies in enabling multiple agents to collaborate. This requires seamless communication and data access between agents. The Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol facilitates communication, while Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers provide AI models and agents access to the right data.What is AGNTCY?
AGNTCY is an open-source framework designed to manage the complexities of a collaborative system of AI agents. It addresses challenges such as finding the right agents for tasks, coordinating their interaction, and managing their identities. Vijoy Pandey, SVP/GM of Outshift, describes AGNTCY as an "open-source, open-spec manifestation of the Internet of Agents."Key Components of AGNTCY
- Agent Discovery: Functions like a DNS for agents, allowing them to find and understand each other's capabilities to form effective workflows.
- Agent Identity: Assigns task-based identities to agents, restricting them to only perform authorized tasks.
- Agent Messaging: Uses Secure Low-latency Interactive Messaging (SLIM) to enable secure, quantum-safe, low-latency communication across diverse data types between agents, people, and tools.
- Agent Observability: Provides insight and visibility across complex agent workflows.
- Protocol Integration: Ensures compatibility with A2A and MCP protocols. By donating AGNTCY to the Linux Foundation, Cisco aims to leverage the neutral platform’s ability to grow the project into an industry standard, similar to Kubernetes and PyTorch, which also started as vendor-led projects.
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Industry Support and Future Outlook
The initiative has attracted significant interest. Founding members at the Linux Foundation include Cisco, Dell Technologies, Galileo, Google Cloud, Oracle, and Red Hat, with over 75 members contributing to AGNTCY. This broad collaboration is essential to develop a robust framework that transcends any single company’s expertise. Cisco remains committed to AGNTCY’s development, with Outshift’s working groups continuing their efforts unabated, as noted by Vijoy Pandey in a recent blog post.Read also: After AIOps, now there is AgenticOps: what is it and what can you do with it?
Source: Originally published at Techzine on July 30, 2025.