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Builders & open source

Manik Surtani

CTO and Co-founder, Agentic AI Foundation

Manik Surtani is the CTO and a co-founder of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), the Linux Foundation home for open agentic AI projects including the Model Context Protocol, goose and AGENTS.md. When the foundation was announced in December 2025, Surtani spoke for Block as its Head of Open Source, the company that contributed goose.123

At a glance

Current role
CTO and Co-founder
Sector
Nonprofit
Work listed
1
Sources cited
3
Profile reviewed

Career

At Block, Surtani was Head of Open Source when the Linux Foundation announced the Agentic AI Foundation on December 9, 2025. Block was one of the founding contributors, giving the foundation goose, an agent framework first released in early 2025 that combines language models, extensible tools and MCP-based integrations.3

Surtani is now listed among the foundation's staff as CTO and co-founder. AAIF describes itself as a neutral, open foundation that hosts open protocols and open-source projects for agentic AI, including MCP, goose, AGENTS.md, Agent2Agent and agentgateway.12

Work and contributions

  • goose Open-source code

    Spoke for Block, as its Head of Open Source, when Block contributed goose, its open-source, local-first AI agent framework, to the newly formed Agentic AI Foundation.3

Timeline

  1. Spoke for Block, as Head of Open Source, at the announcement of the Agentic AI Foundation.3

Other documented roles

Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.

  • Head of Open Source (as of December 2025), Block3

Where they work

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References

3 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026

  1. Staff — Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation) · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  2. About — Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation) · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  3. Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the Agentic AI FoundationThe Linux Foundation · Announcement · published Dec 9, 2025 · accessed Oct 21, 2026