Just weeks after OpenAI announced it would adopt a rival standard from Anthropic to connect AI models with data systems, Google has followed suit.
In a post on the X platform Wednesday, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, announced that Google will add support for Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) in its Gemini models and SDK. He did not provide a specific timeline.
"MCP is an excellent protocol that is quickly becoming the open standard for the AI agent era," Hassabis wrote. "Looking forward to further developing it with the MCP team and others in the industry."
MCP allows models to retrieve data from sources such as business tools and software to complete tasks, and also access content libraries and application development environments. The protocol enables developers to establish two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications, such as chatbots.
Developers can expose data through "MCP servers" and build "MCP clients"—such as applications and workflows—that connect to these servers on demand. Since Anthropic open-sourced MCP, companies including Block, Apollo, Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph have added MCP support to their platforms.
