Hitachi Becomes First Japanese Company to Join the Agentic AI Foundation, Supporting Standardization of AI Access Permission Management
Contributing to Efficient Realization of Safe Social Infrastructure by Applying Outcomes to HMAX
March 10, 2026
Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd. (Hitachi) has become the first Japanese company to join the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)*1 as a Gold Member. The AAIF is the open foundation driving the transparent and collaborative evolution of agentic AI. Hitachi will participate in activities such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP)*2, a core project of the AAIF, supporting the standardization and practical implementation of permission management when AI agents access data, applications, and other resources. Through these activities, Hitachi will promote innovation to solve societal challenges alongside members companies and organizations worldwide. Furthermore, Hitachi will leverage the outcomes of these activities within "HMAX by Hitachi (HMAX),"*3 a suite of next-generation solutions that brings the power of AI to social infrastructure, contributing to the efficient realization of safe social infrastructure.
Hitachi has participated in the Keycloak project*4 to promote standardization and practical implementation that enables unified management and control of complex data access authentication and authorization in environments where AI agents collaborate, using open standard protocols such as MCP. By joining the AAIF initiative, Hitachi will continue to advance access permission management and authentication/authorization to prevent security risks in rapidly evolving AI, such as unintended data leaks and tampering with AI agent credentials.
Hitachi's HMAX leverages vast data from both physical and digital assets to enhance advanced technologies like physical AI and agentic AI with Hitachi's unique deep domain knowledge. Hitachi solves complex challenges in social infrastructure, collaborating with industry-leading partners. To address these challenges and drive transformative initiatives—such as automating complex decision-making from frontline operations to executive management—in collaboration with our partners, it is essential to ensure security through standardized AI access permission management protocols. To achieve this, Hitachi will promote the standardization of authentication and authorization specifications for AI access permission management through the AAIF initiative, expanding secure AI use cases in collaboration with our partners worldwide.
Through these activities, Hitachi will continue contributing to the realization of a society where everyone can safely enjoy the value brought by AI.
*1 For details, please refer to: https://aaif.io/
*2 An open protocol that enables seamless integration between LLM applications and external data sources and tools.
*3 News Release " Hitachi Launches Expanded HMAX Solutions Accelerating Social Innovation Globally Across Industries" (January 6, 2026)
*4 An open-source identity and access management solution for applications and services, built on security standard protocols, and a project under CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation)
Comment from Jim Zemlin, Executive Director and CEO of the Linux Foundation
Hitachi's ongoing commitment and contributions to open source prove that critical infrastructure is best built through collaboration. We are thrilled to welcome them as a Gold Member of the Agentic AI Foundation.
Related Links
Trademarks
Other organization and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective organizations.
Contact
AI & Software Services Business Unit, Hitachi, Ltd.
