Blog | Linux Foundation

Open Secure AI Alliance Joins the Linux Foundation to Build a Shared, Open Defense Stack for the AI Era

Written by The Linux Foundation | Sep 14, 2026, 4:00:00 PM

Originally founded by dozens of enterprise leaders and NVIDIA, the Alliance moves to neutral governance to expand industry collaboration on open AI security tools, research and shared defenses

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 14, 2026 – The Linux Foundation, the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards and data today announced that the Open Secure AI Alliance has joined the Linux Foundation, establishing a neutral home for organizations across AI, cybersecurity and open source to build and share an open defensive stack for securing software and AI agents.

As organizations build AI into software and infrastructure, effective defenses must extend across models and inference, agents and context, identity and policy, enforcement, containment and the underlying infrastructure. Originally established by NVIDIA in collaboration with members including the Linux Foundation, the Open Secure AI Alliance develops open technologies that give security leaders the ability to inspect how those defenses work, adapt them to their environments, run them on infrastructure they control, and build greater resilience as models, vendors and infrastructure evolve.

“AI systems should be secure, reliable and predictable,” said Jim Zemlin, CEO, Linux Foundation. “By bringing the Open Secure AI Alliance to the Linux Foundation, we are creating a neutral home where industry, researchers and governments can collaborate on open tools, shared standards and evidence-based practices that strengthen security and support AI innovation."

“AI security improves when organizations openly share what they learn,” said Justin Boitano, vice president, Enterprise AI, NVIDIA. “With the Linux Foundation as its new home, the Open Secure AI Alliance can bring together experts across models, harnesses and infrastructure to turn shared evidence into practical, verifiable defenses for the entire AI stack.”

The Alliance is focused on two complementary goals: building an open defensive stack for AI and strengthening collective defense by enabling organizations to test systems, share evidence and turn discoveries into protections that can benefit the broader ecosystem. These contributions run alongside existing Linux Foundation security communities, including the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), creating opportunities to advance shared standards and defensive infrastructure across open source software and AI.

Shared AI Findings Exchange - Request for Comments

A core initiative within the Alliance is the Shared AI Findings Exchange (SAFE), an effort designed to help organizations learn collectively from AI security incidents. SAFE is intended to confidentially collect and analyze findings, promptly inform affected parties and convert recurring failures into evidence-based controls that organizations can use to strengthen their defenses. Developers, defenders, researchers and organizations are invited to contribute to the SAFE proposal by September 21, after which the Alliance will work with its members to integrate feedback and move the guidelines forward.

Why Collective Defense Matters

The Alliance ensures no single vendor controls the end-to-end AI stack by helping enterprises move agentic AI from experimentation into production, including best practices such as:

  • Keeping the AI stack open across models, agent harnesses, datasets, prompts, reference architectures and evaluations so defenders can adapt protections to their environments.
  • Applying proven security fundamentals to AI agents: asset visibility, identity and permissions, deterministic controls, change management, monitoring and clear human accountability.
  • Developing shared evaluation standards, stronger attribution and rapid, trusted sharing of agent traces and incident lessons so the community can turn incidents into practical controls.
  • Exercising test response playbooks and tabletop simulations to prepare before incidents occur and scale AI adoption with greater confidence.

NVIDIA will join the Linux Foundation community at Open Source Summit Europe in Prague, CZ on October 7 to talk about building collective defense in the AI era. Register here to join the event before standard rates end on September 21.

To learn more about the Open Secure AI Alliance and how to participate, visit https://secureaialliance.org/.