A2A turns one: 150 organisations and a stable 1.0 specification

A year ago, Google launched the Agent2Agent protocol (A2A) with around 50 partners. On 9 April, the Linux Foundation, which now runs the project, marked the anniversary with a status report: more than 150 supporting organisations, a stable 1.0 specification and support in the agent platforms of all three large cloud providers.

Anniversary press releases are designed to sound good. Even so, this one says something useful about where agent integration is heading.

What the numbers say

According to the Linux Foundation:

• More than 150 organisations now support A2A, up from about 50 at launch. They include AWS, Cisco, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow.
• Version 1.0 is the first stable specification. It adds support for several transport protocols, multi-tenancy for enterprise use and signed Agent Cards, so an agent can prove it is who it claims to be.
• Microsoft supports A2A in Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, AWS through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Runtime, and Google across Google Cloud.
• There are production-ready SDKs for Python, JavaScript, Java, Go and .NET.
• A2A is used in production in supply chain, financial services, insurance and IT operations, although no customers are named.

Why it matters

A stable version matters more than the member count. Integration teams are reluctant to build on a specification that changes every few months, and 1.0 is the signal many have been waiting for. Signed Agent Cards also address one of the most obvious risks: an agent that pretends to be another, or claims abilities it does not have.

The cloud support matters too. When Microsoft, AWS and Google all speak the same protocol between agents, it becomes realistic to let an agent in one cloud hand work to an agent in another. That is exactly the kind of cross-platform traffic integration platforms were made to handle.

How it fits with MCP

The Linux Foundation describes A2A and MCP as complementary. MCP connects an agent to the tools and data it needs. A2A connects agents to each other, including across company boundaries. Most enterprise scenarios will need both, and integration vendors are already adding support for both.

What to watch

1. Integration platform support. Ask your iPaaS vendor whether it supports A2A 1.0, and whether it can act as a gateway between agents, not only between systems.
2. Identity and signing. Signed Agent Cards help, but check how agent identity is linked to your own identity provider and access rules.
3. Named production cases. The report names no customers. Look for concrete references before building critical processes on multi-agent flows.

A2A has gone from announcement to stable standard in a year. The next year will show whether it is used for real business processes, or mostly in demos.