Envoy AI Gateway joins AAIF and renames to 'Agent Router'

Envoy AI Gateway joined the AAIF (AI Agent Infrastructure Foundation) on September 9, 2026, and changed its project name to 'Agent Router'. This renaming only affects the project name, governance (moving from under CNCF Envoy to independent AAIF), community channels, and repository location; deployed resources such as CRDs, API groups, CLI, container images, and Helm charts remain unchanged. Existing operators can continue to use it without modifying CI/CD.

Architecture and Key Features

Agent Router uses Envoy Proxy as the data plane and acts as a control plane that provides access to various models and MCP tools through a single OpenAI-compatible API. To suit the characteristics of agent environments, it integrates the following five features at the gateway:

• Model Name Virtualization: Hides API differences between providers and provides OpenAI-compatible endpoints
• Upstream Authentication: Agents only need to authenticate with the gateway, while the gateway manages actual provider credentials
• Provider Fallback: Automatically retries and switches based on priority upon failure
• MCP Server Multiplexing: Exposes only necessary tools through identity-based filtering to minimize context
• Usage-based Rate Limiting: Applies token-unit limits

Release Status and Ecosystem

The project began joint development by Bloomberg and Tetrate in 2024, and 5 CRDs were promoted to stable APIs in v1.0.0 (GA in June 2026). It currently supports 16 providers, including OpenAI and Anthropic. v1.1.0 added vLLM-style token calculation, improved streamIdleTimeout, and MCP hostnames support. It maintains the Apache 2.0 license, and Tetrate operates a separate commercial service called 'Tetrate Agent Router Service' as an open-source co-developer.