Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic Team Up (Kind of) to Boost Business Tools AI

Linking AI systems to tools and databases usually needs custom code for each connection, which takes a lot of time and is difficult to scale.

Three major AI companies—Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google—are adding Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) to their systems. This is a major step toward creating a standard for how AI works with external tools and business software.

MCP, which Anthropic made open-source late last year, is a universal interface for AI applications. It helps models connect easily to data sources, tools, and systems without needing custom integrations for each one. The protocol has three main parts: Resources (data objects), Tools (functions for actions), and Prompts (templates that guide model behavior). To help companies adopt the protocol faster, Anthropic also provided pre-built servers for widely used enterprise software like Google Drive, GitHub, and Slack.

OpenAI announced on March 26 that it would start using MCP ...