Microsoft Unveils MRC Open Networking Protocol for AI at Build 2026, Co-Developed with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, NVIDIA, and OpenAI

Microsoft announced the Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC) protocol at Build 2026, an open networking standard co-developed with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, NVIDIA, and OpenAI to improve throughput and fault tolerance for large-scale AI training and inference across data center fabrics. MRC enables smarter multi-path routing at scale without requiring proprietary hardware, addressing bottlenecks that emerge when coordinating tens of thousands of GPUs. Microsoft plans to submit MRC to relevant standards bodies and release a reference implementation as open source.