# Data Package: Post 1 — The IETF's AI Agent Gold Rush

## Key Numbers to Update

- **361 drafts** (was 260 in earlier draft)
- **557 authors** from **230 organizations** (was 403 from 184)
- **1,780 ideas** (was 1,262)
- Growth: 3 drafts in Jan 2024 to 86 in Feb 2026 = **~29x in 14 months** (or 43x peak-to-trough)
- Safety ratio: **~8:1** capability-to-safety (improved from 4:1 due to keyword expansion bringing in ML infra drafts with safety elements; the core agent space is still 4:1)
- 12 keywords: agent, ai-agent, llm, autonomous, machine-learning, artificial-intelligence, mcp, agentic, inference, generative, intelligent, aipref
- 6 NEW keywords added: mcp, agentic, inference, generative, intelligent, aipref — these brought 101 additional drafts

## Updated Category Breakdown (for Post 1 table)

| Category | Drafts | % of Corpus |
|----------|--------|-------------|
| A2A protocols | 136 | 37.7% |
| Agent identity/auth | 121 | 33.5% |
| Autonomous netops | 98 | 27.1% |
| Policy/governance | 91 | 25.2% |
| ML traffic mgmt | 74 | 20.5% |
| Agent discovery/reg | 65 | 18.0% |
| AI safety/alignment | 45 | 12.5% |
| Model serving/inference | 42 | 11.6% |
| Human-agent interaction | 30 | 8.3% |

## Growth Curve Data

The steepest acceleration: Sep 2025 (17) -> Oct 2025 (67) -> Nov 2025 (61) -> Feb 2026 (86).

The IETF 121 meeting was Nov 2025 in Dublin. The post-meeting submission spike is visible.

## Author Landscape Summary

- Top 5 authors all from Huawei: Bing Liu (23), Zhenbin Li (21), Nan Geng (20), Qiangzhou Gao (20), Xiaotong Shang (19)
- Jonathan Rosenberg (Five9) is highest-ranked non-Chinese author at #9 with 10 drafts
- Cisco authors collectively: ~25 drafts across entities

## Safety Deficit Framing

- 45 drafts touch safety/alignment (12.5%)
- 136 A2A protocol drafts (37.7%)
- 30 human-agent interaction drafts (8.3%)
- The ratio of A2A protocols to human-agent interaction: **4.5:1** — agents talking to each other, not to humans

## WG Adoption

Only 36 of 361 drafts (10%) are WG-adopted. The standards are still overwhelmingly individual submissions.
