OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block Are Teaming Up to Make AI Agents Play Nice
Summary
OpenAI, Anthropic and Block are backing a new initiative to create open standards for agentic AI — software that acts autonomously, coordinates with other systems, and performs multi-step tasks. The move aims to make agents interoperable, safer and easier for developers and organisations to integrate, while reducing fragmentation across competing agent frameworks.
The effort signals that major AI players want a common foundation for building and connecting agents, addressing technical compatibility and some safety concerns as agent use grows in industry and consumer products.
Key Points
- OpenAI, Anthropic and Block have publicly supported a new push for open standards around agentic AI.
- The initiative focuses on interoperability so different agent systems can communicate and cooperate safely.
- Standards aim to simplify developer tooling and integration for multi-step, autonomous AI behaviours.
- Backing from big AI firms suggests standardisation could shape commercial and technical ecosystems.
- Establishing open specs is intended to address safety, control and fragmentation as agents proliferate.
- There are still questions about governance, whose priorities the standards will reflect, and how they’ll affect competition.
Content summary
The article reports that several leading AI companies are collaborating around an open-standards effort for agentic software. By creating shared protocols and interfaces, the initiative hopes to make it easier for agents from different vendors to interact, to reduce duplicated engineering effort, and to provide clearer building blocks for safety and oversight. The push comes as agents — systems that can take actions across apps and services — are becoming more capable and widely adopted, raising both opportunity and risk.
WIRED notes the move as a sign that industry heavyweights want to influence how agent ecosystems develop, and that standard-setting may be a pragmatic response to the technical mess that can emerge when many proprietary agent frameworks compete without common rules.
Context and relevance
Why this matters: agentic AI is moving from research demos into real products that will automate tasks, co‑ordinate across services and potentially make consequential decisions. Standards could speed adoption, improve safety and reduce lock‑in — but they could also entrench the preferences of dominant firms if governance isn’t broad-based.
For readers tracking AI policy, enterprise adoption or developer tooling, this is a development to watch: it intersects with regulatory debates, competition dynamics and ongoing efforts to produce interoperable, auditable AI systems.
Why should I read this?
Look — if you build with AI, manage it, or make decisions about buying it, this short piece tells you the game is changing. Big vendors are trying to set the rules now. Read it so you know who’s trying to steer the ship and what it might mean for your stack (and your risk register).
Source
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-anthropic-and-block-are-teaming-up-on-ai-agent-standards/