- The Agentic AI Foundation was formed in December to provide an open source home for MCP and two other agentic AI projects
- Ericsson is the only wireless RAN vendor among its membership
- The Swedish vendor said its there to help ensure autonomous AI agents can work across vendor and network borders
The Linux Foundation is home to a key new AI initiative, and one major telco vendor has hopped aboard to help ensure next-generation wireless networks are prepared for what the AI future has in store.
Founded in December 2025 under the Linux Foundation umbrella, the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) is designed to provide open source governance for a trio of critical AI projects: Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), goose from payments company Block, and OpenAI’s AGENTS.md. MCP, which provides a standardized way to connect AI models to different data sources, is perhaps the most well-known of the three.
Sitting amongst a sea of founding members which include the big three cloud hyperscalers, Anthropic, OpenAI, Block, Cloudflare and Bloomberg at the platinum tier and Cisco, Akamai, IBM, Red Hat and Telus in the gold tier is leading RAN vendor Ericsson.
The Swedish company is notably the only RAN vendor in the mix at AAIF. Nokia, Samsung and Huawei are not currently listed as members, though Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung are all part of the AI-RAN Alliance formed in 2024.
A new kind of network
So, what is Ericsson doing in an agentic AI group with no overt telecom focus? According to a spokesperson, it’s there to ensure wireless networks do their part in enabling “autonomous AI agents to interoperate securely across vendors, industries and national boundaries.”
“We are at a strategic inflection point defined by the combination of AI, cloud and mobile technologies,” the spokesperson told Fierce. While AI was initially centralized with models running in data centers, Ericsson noted the technology is rapidly evolving toward the proliferation of “autonomous agents embedded across our devices, vehicles and cities.”
Thus, wireless networks need to evolve to meet the needs of emerging AI systems. Ericsson’s vision, according to the spokesperson, is one of a 6G/AI intelligent fabric capable of delivering “the best network for AI everywhere.”
“To unleash their full potential requires a new kind of wireless infrastructure designed to connect networks, the cloud, the billions of devices and sensors and hundreds of millions of homes and businesses,” Ericsson's spokesperson said. “A key takeaway from the internet’s evolution is that scalable systems rely on architectural continuity rather than disruption…This is why open and interoperable architectures are essential.”
Ericsson joined the AAIF as a Gold Tier member, which one step below the Platinum Tier position held by the cloud hyperscalers and AI model companies.
While Gold tier members aren’t guaranteed a seat on the AAIF governing board and don’t have sway over the Foundation’s strategic direction like Platinum members do, they are allowed to participate in working groups and given early access to AAIF initiatives and conformance programs.
Gold tier membership is priced at $200,000 with Silver membership at just $10,000. Platinum membership is currently closed.
Wither Nokia?
Given MCP’s importance to the agentic AI future, Nokia’s absence from the group is interesting since the vendor announced a high-profile AI-RAN collaboration with Nvidia back in October and subsequently joined the Open Compute Project to help tackle IP layer and wireless AI challenges.
Then again, Nvidia isn’t a member either.