en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Linux Foundation has announced the formation of the Appia Foundation, which will operate under the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), to develop modular specifications as a connectivity layer that bridges foundational global standards with practical, trustworthy assessments across the global AI value chain.
As regulations worldwide shift toward active enforcement, partners in the AI value chain need to provide evidence of trustworthy AI in contracts and supplier evaluations. International frameworks such as ISO/IEC standards lay an important foundation, but require consistent, shared mechanisms to translate these global rules into practical, verifiable evidence. The Appia Foundation provides an open connectivity layer, developing publicly available global specifications based on international standards and existing frameworks. These specifications are divided into a Requirements and Guidance layer and an Assessment Enablement layer, providing testing standards, evaluation guidelines, and component classifications for effectively assessing AI models, systems, applications, and processes.
Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation, stated that as international standards and legal frameworks mature, global organizations need a consistent, practical way to verify whether AI systems meet new expectations. The Appia Foundation establishes a neutral governance environment where the entire industry can collaboratively develop a common evaluation framework, helping organizations reduce complexity, cut operational costs, and build trust. The Appia specification architecture is designed for functional modularity and evidence transfer, allowing organizations to evaluate only the parts relevant to their roles, components, and regulatory contexts. Conformity evidence demonstrated by upstream suppliers can be passed to downstream users, enabling seamless reuse of evidence across the value chain.
Craig Shank, Executive Director of the Appia Foundation, noted that AI systems now make decisions about people's loans, children's school admissions, and employment, and recipients have the right to know that these systems are built and evaluated against defensible standards. The Appia Foundation's mission is to create publicly available specifications that enable organizations across the AI value chain to demonstrate their systems' compliance with standards, building the necessary layer of accountability to promote safe and trustworthy AI across major industries.
Initial members of the Appia Foundation include Arm, Armilla AI, Ericsson, Google, Mastercard, Microsoft, Mitsubishi Electric, Naaia, Nemko, Omron, OpenAI, Schneider Electric, and Siemens.
Mark Hambleton, Senior Vice President of Software at Arm, stated that as AI becomes increasingly embedded in systems from cloud to edge, organizations need a consistent way to demonstrate compliance with emerging standards and regulations. The Appia Foundation represents a significant step in building practical trust across the AI supply chain. Karthik Ramakrishnan, CEO of Armilla AI, believes that the more AI systems are evaluated against trusted, shared standards, the more insurable they become, and the Appia Foundation provides a common basis for proof in the market. Per Beming, Chief Standardization Officer at Ericsson, stated that unified standardization and regulation are critical for scaling trustworthy AI globally, and the Appia Foundation helps establish conformity specifications. Amanda Storey, Vice President of Trust and Safety for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at Google, stated that based on a history of collaboration with organizations like ISO and NIST, collaboration is the best way to build safe AI.
Andrew Reiskind, Chief Data Officer at Mastercard, believes that AI governance is reaching a tipping point, where principles and standards must translate into measurable, practical outcomes, and the Appia Foundation fills this gap. Natasha Crampton, Chief Responsible AI Officer at Microsoft, stated that organizations need practical ways to demonstrate their systems are trustworthy, and the Appia Foundation can help translate emerging standards into more consistent, assessable evidence. Yu Okada, Deputy Director of the AI Transformation Innovation Center at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, stated that the company is committed to delivering responsible AI systems and recognizes the critical importance of establishing globally recognized standards for assessing AI system trustworthiness. Nathalie Beslay, CEO and Founder of Naaia, pointed out that trustworthy AI must become an architecture, and the Appia Foundation establishes a common foundation for translating regulations and standards into verifiable assessments. Dr. Pepijn van der Laan, Global Technical Director at Nemko Digital, stated that establishing a clear, industry-aligned architecture for AI standards is exactly what the ecosystem needs, and the Linux Foundation's initiative brings structure, openness, and technical rigor to AI standards. Ann O'Leary, Vice President of Global Affairs at OpenAI, stated that building global trust requires common, practical standards, and the Appia Foundation can help translate cutting-edge AI practices into open specifications and standards. Philippe Rambach, Chief AI Officer at Schneider Electric, stated that joining the Appia Foundation is a natural extension of the company's belief in open and collaborative governance. Markus Reigl, Director of Technical Regulations and Standards at Siemens, stated that trust must be verifiable at every level, and the Appia Foundation's open, modular framework provides a practical way to leverage existing global standards and supplement them with industry-specific AI application specifications.
The Joint Development Foundation (JDF) is part of the Linux Foundation project family, designed to accelerate organizations' development of technical specifications, standards, datasets, and source code, providing the necessary corporate and legal infrastructure, an experienced support team, and an extensive network to achieve the highest levels of industry and international standardization. The Linux Foundation is the world's leading platform for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Its projects include Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX, and Zephyr, laying the foundation for global infrastructure.
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