Snowflake, Salesforce, BlackRock and other enterprise vendors have launched the Open Semantic Interchange initiative, which aims to standardize data and ensure semantic metadata interoperability.
The move comes as standards have been flying in 2025 as vendors create frameworks for agentic AI. Model Context Protocol (MCP) from Anthropic is the best known, but Google Cloud launched Agent2Agent (A2A) and last week outlined AP2, a standard for agentic commerce.
- Agentic AI protocols: MCP and A2A today, many more tomorrow
- OpenAI's support puts MCP in pole position as agentic AI standard
- Microsoft supports Google Cloud's Agent2Agent standard
While AI obviously needs protocols to connect AI agents, fragmented data definitions are also a big problem for interoperability. Snowflake said Open Semantic interchange (OSI) is an open source initiative that wants to create a vendor-neutral specification for how semantic metadata is defined and shared.
Christian Kleinerman, executive vice president of product at Snowflake, said OSI is looking "to solve a foundational challenge for AI — the lack of a common semantic standard."
OSI is looking to address semantic data for businesses, domains and industries as a framework to make metadata interoperable.
The goals of OSI include enhancing interoperability across multiple AI, business intelligence and analytics tools, accelerating adoption of AI app and streamlining operations.
Initial partners include Alation, Atlan, BlackRock, Blue Yonder, Cube, dbt Labs, Elementum AI, Hex, Honeydew, Mistral AI, Omni, RelationalAI, Salesforce, Select Star, Sigma, Snowflake and ThoughtSpot.
