The Protocol Nobody Talks About That Everyone Uses
Anthropic's Model Context Protocol crossed 97 million installs in March 2026, a milestone that signals its transition from an experimental standard to foundational infrastructure for building AI agents. Every major AI provider now ships MCP-compatible tooling, and the protocol has become the default mechanism by which agents connect to external tools, APIs, and data sources.
This is critical context for understanding the AI power structure. GTC 2026 was dominated by agentic AI frameworks, particularly the NeMoCLAW and OpenCLAW orchestration tools, drawing the largest attendance of any sessions. Fortune 500 companies announced production agentic deployments across manufacturing, logistics, and finance.
MCP is becoming what HTTP was to the web: invisible infrastructure that every major player has to support. But unlike HTTP, which is governed by an open standards body, MCP is controlled by Anthropic. That's either a feature (standardization) or a risk (bottleneck), depending on your perspective.
The strategic play: Anthropic just locked in a de facto veto over how enterprise AI agents interact with business systems. That's enormous.