Dive Brief:
- The Linux Foundation plans to build an open standard that will help verify AI agents working across the internet. The Agent Name Service will be built on the same infrastructure powering the internet — the Domain Name System — to securely identify autonomous agents at scale, the nonprofit shared in a Tuesday announcement.
- ANS will create an identity layer for agents anchored to DNS, which already processes millions of queries per second globally, according to the announcement. The ANS framework will enable systems and users to verify who the agent represents, its permissions and whether its operational history and code remain unchanged.
- AI agents’ proliferation across enterprises will make “trusted identity infrastructure a foundational requirement,” Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin said in the announcement. “By building on DNS and open standards, ANS creates a scalable and interoperable framework for verified agent communication across the global digital economy.”
Dive Insight:
The Linux Foundation’s plan to build an open standard for AI agent verification comes as IT leaders struggle to govern the technology and manage the scale at which agents are being deployed throughout enterprises.
Only 11% of technology executives feel prepared for the scale of agentic AI deployment over the course of the next year, according to research from IBM's Institute for Business Value. Two-thirds of CIOs and CTOs said they are held accountable for AI systems they are unable to fully control.
Indeed, governance frameworks are not keeping pace with agentic AI adoption, according to Deloitte. Only 1 in 5 companies report having a mature governance model for AI agents despite plans to ramp up deployment of the technology. Enterprises will more than double their spending on AI agents and generative AI, contributing to a projected $2.59 trillion global spending on AI this year.
The introduction of ever more powerful AI models such as Anthropic’s Mythos have demonstrated the high level of access agentic AI can engineer. The Linux Foundation said enterprises face growing challenges authenticating and governing agents.
Building the ANS open standard on DNS opens a path for agent discoverability and identification across the internet, ensuring the “agentic web is fast, secure, and built on a shared foundation of trust,” Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht said in the announcement.
“For decades, DNS has been the foundational bedrock of how we navigate and trust the web,” Knecht said. “By extending this existing, proven infrastructure to AI agents, the Agent Name Service offers one way to address the security and identity challenge before it gets out of hand.”
The Linux Foundation is seeking input from enterprises, security experts, AI developers, infrastructure providers and other stakeholders as it works to set open standards for agentic AI.
