AOUSD Drives Global 3D Data Interoperability and Agentic AI Workflows with New Core Specification Milestones and Members

With new members ByteDance, Huawei, Physicl, and Unity, AOUSD establishes OpenUSD as the foundational 3D data layer across enterprise software, gaming and simulation pipelines

Summary

• AOUSD welcomes ByteDance, Huawei, Physicl, and Unity as General Members, expanding its reach into gaming, consumer XR platforms, and large-scale enterprise digital transformation.
• AOUSD begins the ISO certification process for Core Specification 1.1, the first step to international standardization, and launches a GitHub repository, reducing procurement friction in regulated industries and giving developers direct, transparent input into the specification's evolution.
• OpenUSD emerges as the 3D data layer for agentic AI workflows, with early implementations from Cesium, PTC, and NVIDIA demonstrating how AI agents can understand, navigate, and modify 3D environments built on the Core Specification.
• AOUSD and member companies including Pixar, NVIDIA, Autodesk and Epic Games will be at SIGGRAPH on July 19–23 in Los Angeles to present sessions spanning USD production workflows, composition, physically based rendering, and Hydra-based rendering.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 21, 2026 — The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), the open organization dedicated to fostering the interoperability of 3D content through OpenUSD, today announced new General Members, including ByteDance, Huawei, Physicl and Unity, feature enhancements, and the increased adoption of its Core Specification at SIGGRAPH 2026. The updates expand the organization's reach across enterprise software, gaming and content pipelines in response to the acceleration of agentic AI.

The addition of ByteDance, Huawei, Physicl and Unity further this momentum, bringing vital expertise in global consumer platforms and large-scale enterprise digital transformation to the organization. This expansion strengthens an already robust roster of industry leaders, which includes founding members Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, NVIDIA and Pixar, collaborating to build a unified 3D ecosystem.

"The rapid expansion of the Alliance for OpenUSD ecosystem demonstrates the growing industry demand for an open, interoperable 3D data standard," said Guy Martin, Director of Open Source & Standards at NVIDIA and Vice Chair of the AOUSD Steering Committee. "By welcoming new members and achieving critical milestones across our working groups, we are accelerating 3D data interoperability on a worldwide scale and providing the foundational data layer required for the next generation of AI and simulation workflows."

Shaping the Future of Worldwide 3D Data Interoperability

AOUSD has achieved critical milestones to eliminate multi-industry procurement friction, streamline asset workflows, and accelerate ecosystem-wide project exchange across working groups, including:

Core Spec Working Group

• Core Specification 1.1 ISO Certification: AOUSD begins the ISO certification process in Core Specification 1.1 release, which is the first step to international standardization. ISO certification removes procurement friction for manufacturing, automotive and government organizations that require compliance with international standards. This compliance requirement transforms OpenUSD from an optional standard into an essential requirement in regulated industries.
• Core Specification GitHub Repository: By hosting on GitHub, AOUSD enables developers direct access to propose changes and follow the spec’s evolution in real time.

Geometry, Physics and Materials Working Groups

• 1.0 Releases: Expected later this year, these releases deliver a single interoperable specification for three critical properties. ISO certification removes barriers for regulated industries and the public GitHub repositories establish best practices for all AOUSD working groups. The Geometry and Materials specifications enable portable exchange of 3D shapes and surface appearances for real-world and virtual models, while Physics enables advanced simulation capabilities for applications.

New Release of OpenUSD

• OpenUSD v26.08 is now available and marks an important milestone for three new foundational schemas (Profiles, Multiple Level-of-Detail, and Backplates) that strengthen interoperability and authoring precision across diverse pipelines and industries.

Establishing OpenUSD as the 3D Data Layer for Agentic AI

OpenUSD is emerging as the 3D data layer for agentic workflows across robotics, simulation and geospatial applications. Its scalable, interoperable format allows AI agents to understand, navigate and modify 3D environments. The interoperability properties of the Core Specification provide a shared, queryable representation of the physical world that developers can build upon.

Early ecosystem projects and implementations demonstrating this potential include:

• Cesium: Using AI-integrations and agentic skills to make geospatial data readable for AI agents.
• PTC: Leveraging a multi-agent workflow that automatically prepares CAD models in OpenUSD for robotics simulation.
• NVIDIA: Introducing nanoUSD-labs, an experimental project exploring agent-guided generation of a portable, embeddable USD Core Specification implementation.

SIGGRAPH 2026

AOUSD and its member organizations will be at SIGGRAPH 2026, taking place July 19-23 in Los Angeles. Throughout the week, member companies including Pixar, NVIDIA, Autodesk and Epic Games will lead sessions and hands-on labs covering OpenUSD in production, USD composition and debugging, physically based rendering with MaterialX and OpenPBR, and Hydra-based rendering workflows. The program also includes technical deep-dives on advancing shared specifications across geometry, physics, and rendering – reflecting the growing role of OpenUSD as the common foundation for 3D content creation across the industry. For a list of AOUSD’s sessions at SIGGRAPH, visit https://aousd.org/event/siggraph-2026/.

For more information about AOUSD, visit https://aousd.org/.

Supporting Quotes

"PICO is excited to join AOUSD. As strong advocates for open standards, we believe a shared 3D data format will bring significant value to the 3D and XR developer community by making content more portable and streamlining creators' workflows. With our latest PICO OS 6 update, we have adopted USD as a core format for our new Spatial SDK and tooling. We look forward to contributing to the AOUSD community, collaborating with industry partners, and helping drive the standard forward." - Jian Zhang, Head of Core OS & Developer Engineering, PICO, a ByteDance Company

“Huawei is delighted to join AOUSD and looks forward to contributing to the successful evolution of the standards and their implementation in a wide range of scenarios.” - Paul Higgs, Director of Business and Tech Development, Huawei

“Physicl is built on open standards, and OpenUSD is central to how we handle 3D data for simulation, where interoperable physics matters most. We're joining AOUSD to contribute to the Physics Working Group and help push toward a normative physics schema that lets simulation data move reliably between tools. For an industry where the value of a simulation depends entirely on the quality of the data behind it, a shared standard is what lets everyone build on the same foundation instead of reinventing it alone." - Martin Enthed, VP Labs, Physicl

"Unity is proud to join the Alliance for OpenUSD. Real-time 3D is becoming the connective layer between creative tools, simulation, and now AI agents, and that only works at scale if the underlying data is truly interoperable. Joining AOUSD lets us help shape the Core Specification that serves not just gaming, but the broader industrial and enterprise workflows moving to real-time 3D. We're looking forward to contributing to that work alongside the rest of the community." - Sarah Lash, SVP and GM of Industry, Unity

About the Alliance for OpenUSD

The Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) is an open organization dedicated to fostering the interoperability of 3D content through OpenUSD (Universal Scene Description). By promoting greater interoperability of 3D tools and data, the Alliance enables developers and content creators to describe, compose, and simulate large-scale 3D projects and build an ever-widening range of 3D-enabled products and services.