Linux Foundation takes governance of TRACE, an open standard for AI runtime attestation

If you’ve ever wondered how to prove that an AI agent actually did what it claimed to do, on the hardware it claimed to use, with the data policies it claimed to follow, you’re asking the right question. The Linux Foundation just announced it will govern an open standard designed to answer it. TRACE, which stands for Trust, Runtime Attestation and Compliance Evidence, is an open specification that generates hardware-attested, cryptographically verifiable records of AI agent and confidential workload execution. Think of it as a tamper-proof receipt for every AI operation, one that a third party can verify without having to take the operator’s word for anything. What TRACE actually does The specification was originally developed by OPAQUE, a confidential computing firm, in collaboration with AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and the Technology Innovation Institute. Rather than building an entirely new framework from scratch, TRACE integrates several established standards including RATS (RFC 9334), EAT (RFC 9711), SLSA, SCITT, SPIFFE, and EAR to ensure interoperability across different cloud platforms and secure computing environments. The core output is what the project calls “Trust Records.” T...