Google says it’ll embrace Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to data

Just a few weeks after OpenAI said it would adopt rival Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides, Google is following suit.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis announced that Google will add support for Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, or MCP, to its Gemini models and SDK. He gave no timeline.

“MCP is a good protocol and it’s rapidly becoming an open standard for the AI agentic era,” wrote Hassabis. “Look forward to developing it further with the MCP team and others in the industry.”

MCP lets models draw data from sources like business tools and software to complete tasks, as well as from content repositories and app development environments. The protocol enables developers to build two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications, such as chatbots.

Developers can expose data through “MCP servers” and build “MCP clients” — for instance, apps and workflows — that connect to those servers on command. In the months since Anthropic open sourced MCP, companies including Block, Apollo, Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph have added MCP support for their platforms.