This article is part of our MCP Guide: what the Model Context Protocol is, how to use it safely, and how to choose servers, tools and help. Want a second opinion on your setup? Request a free MCP readiness review.
No single company owns the Model Context Protocol (MCP) anymore. Anthropic created MCP, then donated it to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) in December 2025. The AAIF is a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit behind many large open-source projects.
In practice, ownership and control are split. The foundation handles money, membership and the neutral legal home. A group of named individual maintainers still decides what goes into the specification.
This guide explains who does what, as of October 2026, and why it matters if you are betting part of your business on MCP. If you are new to the protocol, start with what MCP is.
Key Takeaways
- Anthropic introduced MCP and donated it to the Agentic AI Foundation, announced on 9 December 2025.
- The AAIF is a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, co-founded by Anthropic, Block and OpenAI.
- The foundation's governing board handles budget, members and new projects, not the technical spec.
- MCP's technical direction is set by individual maintainers, led by two Lead Maintainers, through a public proposal process.
- MCP now sits next to other agent projects in the AAIF, including goose, AGENTS.md, agentgateway and A2A.
- For buyers, the move lowers the risk that one vendor can change or close the protocol on its own.
The short history: from Anthropic project to foundation
Anthropic open-sourced MCP on 25 November 2024. By the time of the donation, Anthropic said MCP had "more than 10,000 active public MCP servers" and over 97 million monthly SDK downloads across Python and TypeScript. Those figures come from Anthropic's donation announcement.
On 9 December 2025, Anthropic donated MCP to the new Agentic AI Foundation. The same announcement lists ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Visual Studio Code among the products that had adopted MCP.
The Linux Foundation's launch press release named three founding contributions:
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) from Anthropic
- goose, the open-source AI agent Block created and contributed to the foundation
- AGENTS.md, a file format that tells coding agents how to work in a repository, from OpenAI
What the Agentic AI Foundation is
The AAIF is a "directed fund" under the Linux Foundation. In plain terms, it is a member-backed foundation with its own board, run inside the Linux Foundation's legal and administrative structure. Companies join in membership tiers such as Platinum and Gold.
Who the members are
The Linux Foundation press release lists eight Platinum members: Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.
It also lists 18 Gold members at launch, including Cisco, Datadog, Docker, IBM, JetBrains, Okta, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Shopify, Snowflake and Twilio. Membership changes over time, so check the AAIF site for the current list.
Who sits on the board
The AAIF About page names a Governing Board and a Technical Committee. As of 28 October 2026, it lists:
| Body | Members named on aaif.io |
|---|---|
| Governing Board | David Nalley (AWS, Chair), April Kyle Nassi (Google, Treasurer), Caitie McCaffrey (Microsoft), Nick Cooper (OpenAI), Brendan Irvine-Broque (Cloudflare), Linzy McCartney (Anthropic), Ania Musial (Bloomberg), Erika Rice Scherpelz (Block), Zhong Wu (Shopify, Gold Member Representative), Matt Vasey (Gates Foundation, Senior Advisor) |
| Technical Committee | David Soria Parra (Anthropic, Chair), Caitie McCaffrey (Microsoft), Bradley Axen (Block), Nick Cooper (OpenAI) |
What the board decides
According to the official MCP blog post on joining the AAIF, the AAIF Governing Board decides strategic investments, budget allocation, member recruitment and approval of new projects.
The same post is clear about what it does not do. It says hosted projects keep "full autonomy over their technical direction and day-to-day operations." It also says the Linux Foundation "will not dictate the technical direction of MCP."
Who actually decides what goes into MCP
The specification is run by people, not companies. The MCP governance page sets out a ladder of roles:
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Lead Maintainers | Final decision authority; can veto any decision |
| Core Maintainers | Steer the specification and overall project direction |
| Maintainers | Run specific areas such as SDKs, docs and working groups |
| Contributors | File issues, open pull requests, join discussions |
The governance page says membership is "for individuals, not companies." There are no seats reserved for any company. If a maintainer changes employer, the role stays with the person.
As of 28 October 2026, the governance page names two Lead Maintainers: David Soria Parra and Den Delimarsky. It lists six Core Maintainers: Peter Alexander, Caitie McCaffrey, Kurtis Van Gent, Clare Liguori, Paul Carleton and Nick Cooper.
How a change gets made
Changes to the spec go through Specification Enhancement Proposals, called SEPs. A SEP is a public written proposal that the community can comment on. Core Maintainers meet every two weeks to discuss and vote on proposals.
This is why the July 2026 spec release was a group effort. You can see the result in our breakdown of what changed in the 2026-07-28 specification.
The legal entity and license
The governance page states that the project is established as "Model Context Protocol a Series of LF Projects, LLC." Code and specification contributions use the Apache License 2.0. Documentation, other than the spec, uses Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Contributors keep the copyright in their own work. They are not required to assign it to anyone.
What other projects live in the AAIF
The foundation has grown beyond its first three projects. The AAIF About page lists five hosted projects as of 28 October 2026:
- Model Context Protocol (MCP), which connects AI apps to tools and data
- goose, the agent Block created and contributed to the foundation. Its GitHub repository moved to the aaif-goose organization in April 2026
- AGENTS.md, OpenAI's instruction file format for coding agents
- agentgateway, an open-source gateway that, according to the agentgateway project's announcement, handles traffic for MCP, agent-to-agent communication, model inference, REST and gRPC; it calls itself the AAIF's fourth hosted initiative
- Agent2Agent (A2A), a standard for agents talking to other agents, which joined as a hosted project in a post dated 17 August 2026
Having MCP and A2A under one roof matters. They solve different problems, and our guide to MCP vs A2A vs function calling explains how they fit together.
Certification
The AAIF also runs training and credentials with Linux Foundation Education. On 14 September 2026, it launched the MCPA certification, a proctored exam aligned to the 2026-07-28 spec. Read more in our guide to the MCPA certification.
What changed for MCP users after the donation
Very little changed day to day. The MCP blog post said plainly: "For MCP little changes." The existing governance model continued, and the maintainers stayed in charge of the spec.
Anthropic said it would keep investing in MCP's development, maintain core infrastructure and take part in the community. That is from the same official blog post.
What did change is the long-term risk picture. Before, one company held the project. Now a neutral nonprofit holds it, and competing vendors fund it together.
Why ownership matters for your business
If you are deciding whether to build on MCP, ownership is a fair question. Here is how the current setup affects common concerns.
- Vendor lock-in. No single AI company can close the spec or change the license on its own. The Apache 2.0 license also lets anyone fork the code.
- Cross-vendor support. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft are all Platinum members. That makes it more likely your MCP server will work across the AI apps your team uses. See which AI apps support MCP.
- Change management. Spec changes are proposed in public and dated. A formal deprecation policy, adopted in the 2026-07-28 release, sets a minimum twelve-month window before features are removed.
- Security is still your job. Neutral governance does not vet individual servers. The protocol is open, but each server you connect is code written by someone else.
What ownership does not tell you
Foundation ownership is about the protocol, not the products built on it. It does not mean:
- Every MCP server is safe, reviewed or endorsed by the AAIF.
- Every AI app supports every MCP feature. Support varies a lot by client.
- The official MCP Registry curates servers. It mostly checks namespaces, as covered in our guide to the MCP Registry.
If you need help deciding where MCP fits in your stack, our Claude Code consulting team works with businesses on that question.
Next step
Neutral ownership makes MCP a safer standard to adopt. It does not make each server you connect safe. Before you plug MCP into business systems, read our guide to MCP security risks and how to reduce them.
Frequently asked questions
Does Anthropic still own MCP?
No. Anthropic donated MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation in December 2025. Anthropic is a Platinum member of the foundation and says it continues to invest in MCP's development and core infrastructure. Its employees also hold maintainer roles as individuals.
Is the Agentic AI Foundation part of the Linux Foundation?
Yes. The AAIF is a directed fund under the Linux Foundation. The MCP project itself is set up as "Model Context Protocol a Series of LF Projects, LLC," according to the MCP governance page.
Who has the final say on the MCP specification?
The Lead Maintainers. The MCP governance page gives them final decision authority, including the power to veto decisions by other maintainers. As of October 2026, they are David Soria Parra and Den Delimarsky.
Can a company buy a seat in MCP's technical governance?
Not according to the published rules. The governance page says maintainer roles belong to individuals, with no seats reserved for specific companies. Companies can join the AAIF as members, which affects funding and foundation decisions, not spec votes.
Is MCP free to use?
Yes. The code and specification are released under the Apache License 2.0, which allows commercial use. Individual MCP servers and the AI apps that connect to them may still charge for their own services.
Did the donation change how MCP works?
Not directly. The official MCP blog said the existing governance model continued as is. Technical changes since then, such as the move to a stateless protocol in the 2026-07-28 release, came through the normal proposal process.
