One year ago, on April 9th, 2025 Google announced the Agent2Agent(A2A) protocol. We saw the need for a "common language" that allows AI agents built on different frameworks to collaborate well across diverse systems. Then, on June 23, 2025 at the Open Source Summit North America in Denver, Mike Smith stood on stage to share a pivotal moment for the future of AI interoperability when Google officially donated the A2A protocol to the Linux Foundation, establishing it as a vendor-neutral, community-governed standard.
This move was driven by a core belief: for AI agents to truly transform how we work and live, they must be able to communicate across framework boundaries and organizational silos without being locked into a single provider's ecosystem. By placing A2A under the neutral stewardship of the Linux Foundation, we opened the doors for the entire industry to build, contribute, and innovate together.
A Foundation of Partners
The formation of the A2A Project was made possible through the support of our founding members, including Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow. Over the past twelve months, this coalition has grown, with over 100 technology companies now supporting the project.
From Prototype to Production
The momentum since the donation has been remarkable. What began as a Google-led initiative has evolved into critical infrastructure for horizontal, peer-to-peer collaboration. Just one month ago, in March, the project reached a major milestone with the release of A2A Protocol v1.0, the first stable, fully production-ready version of the standard.
Key achievements from the community this year include:
- Enhanced Security: The implementation of Signed Agent Cards for cryptographic identity verification, ensuring trust in multi-agent workflows.
- Web-Aligned Architecture: Refined specifications that support familiar load-balancing and security patterns for enterprise-scale deployments.
- Ecosystem Interoperability: Demonstrating how diverse agents built with ADK, LangGraph, AG2 and CrewAI can delegate tasks and coordinate complex workflows seamlessly.
- Experts teaching experts: We have learned from our open collaboration and have shared our knowledge.
Looking Ahead
This flourishing ecosystem of agent protocols helps standardize how agents communicate, interact with the world, and solve real-world problems. The A2Family includes AP2 (Agent Payment Protocol), A2UI (Agent to User Interface), and UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), which are examples of new protocols created using A2A's open extensibility model for agent communication.
As we celebrate this first anniversary, we are more committed than ever to the "A2Family." The A2A protocol is designed to be complementary to existing standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP); while MCP manages internal tool integration, A2A handles the vital external coordination between autonomous entities.
We want to thank the vibrant ecosystem of developers, contributors, and partners who have helped harden this protocol into a world-class standard over the last year.
Join the A2April Celebration!
We're celebrating the first anniversary of A2A all month long with "A2April". You can join the fun by sharing a photo of yourself in the community using the hashtag #A2April. To help you get festive, we've put together a commemorative party hat template with full assembly instructions.
Here's to many more years of innovation and open collaboration!
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the following contributors: Mike Smith, Alan Blount, Kassandra Dhillon, Daryl Ducharme, and April Kyle Nassi
