Linux Foundation Launches Agent Name Service to Give AI Agents Verifiable Identities

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Linux Foundation has unveiled Agent Name Service (ANS), an open standard designed to provide AI agents with verifiable identities and facilitate their discovery, registration, and authentication. This initiative materialized at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026, under the neutral governance of the Linux Foundation.

ANS employs Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure to issue domain-anchored names, register agents, and track their identities via DNS for verification. It also introduces mechanisms to monitor identity records for any unauthorized modifications. The specification comprises seven documents detailing various aspects of ANS, including domain-anchored naming, registration and versioning, DNS publication, public log auditing, integrity monitoring, and agent-to-agent authentication.

Key figures behind ANS include Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation, who emphasized the necessity of verifiable identities for autonomous AI agents to thrive across global systems. The project, governed by a technical steering committee, has already garnered support from eleven organizations, such as Cisco, Cloudflare, DigiCert, GoDaddy, Infoblox, Salesforce, and OWASP. These entities have either contributed to or adopted the standard since its intent to launch was announced in June.

Complementary to ANS, the AGNTCY Agent Directory Service enables the verification of ANS identities. Additionally, ANS Finder implements the Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) specification, passing its registry conformance tests. The full specification and open source code of ANS are accessible on GitHub, making it available for the wider industry to implement and enhance collectively.