Infoblox and GoDaddy say they will support two open standards aimed at helping AI agents identify, discover and verify each other across the web, as organisations prepare for wider deployment of agentic AI in enterprise and online environments.
The companies said the work is intended to improve transparency and reduce security risk as autonomous agents begin interacting with websites, applications and internal systems. The announcement follows recent guidance from Five Eyes intelligence agencies, including the Australian Signals Directorate, on the careful adoption of agentic AI services.
Infoblox is advancing “DNS for AI Discovery” (DNS-AID), which focuses on agent discovery by defining how agents can publish metadata in Domain Name System (DNS) records so other systems can find their capabilities and endpoints. GoDaddy is helping develop the “Agent Name Service” (ANS), an open standard focused on agent identity, naming and verification using DNS and public key infrastructure (PKI).
Both efforts are being developed through community standards bodies, including as Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) drafts, with the stated goal of enabling independent implementations and avoiding concentrated vendor control.
“Agents will only reach their full potential on the open web if people and systems can verify who they are interacting with,” said Jared Sine, chief strategy and legal officer at GoDaddy. “Adopters of the Agent Name Service open standard leverages the only infrastructure that exists today that operates at the scale and speed of the global internet – Domain Name Service. We support Infoblox’s work on DNS-AID and believe open standards for identity, discovery and verification will be critical as agents become part of everyday digital experiences.”
Wei Chen, CLO and EVP of Regulatory Strategy at Infoblox, said the companies were drawing on lessons from the early internet on avoiding centralised control over directories. “DNS replaced it, not with another centralised list, but with an open, federated protocol that anyone could participate in,” Chen said.
Infoblox said DNS-AID is advancing as an IETF draft and open-source software, and uses existing DNS record types and security mechanisms including RFC 9460 Service Bindings (SVCB), DNS-SD service discovery, DNSSEC, and DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE).
GoDaddy said ANS is designed to allow agent operators to use domain names they already own without requiring a new registry or proprietary naming system, with the aim of making agents addressable using existing internet infrastructure.
The companies argued that building identity and discovery on DNS would leverage established global operational practices and resilience features such as caching and anycast, while enabling discovery of agent capabilities and endpoints through extensible record formats such as SVCB.
Infoblox and GoDaddy said they want other industry participants—including cloud providers, registrars, security companies and standards organisations—to join the open standards work.
