Who Formed the Alliance for Open Media to Develop AV1

The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) was established in September 2015 by seven major technology giants aiming to create a next-generation, royalty-free video coding format known as AV1. Facing complex licensing issues and high royalty fees associated with existing standards like HEVC (H.265), these industry leaders joined forces to provide an efficient, open-source video standard suitable for internet video streaming.

The seven founding members that launched the Alliance for Open Media are:

• Amazon: Focused on improving streaming efficiency and reducing bandwidth costs for its Prime Video platform and Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure.
• Cisco: A networking leader that contributed technology from its open-source "Thor" video codec project to enhance real-time web communications, such as video conferencing.
• Google: The primary driver behind the VP9 codec, which contributed substantial architecture from its planned "VP10" codec to form the core baseline of AV1.
• Intel: A hardware leader focused on ensuring future silicon, processors, and graphics chips could efficiently handle hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding for the new format.
• Microsoft: Driven by the need for royalty-free codecs across its Windows operating system, Edge browser, and cloud media services.
• Mozilla: A long-time champion of the open web that brought expertise and code from its experimental "Daala" project (developed with the Xiph.Org Foundation).
• Netflix: The world's largest video streaming service at the time, motivated to find an efficient, patent-unencumbered format to deliver 4K, HDR, and high-definition video across diverse consumer devices.

By pooling their intellectual property, patents, and engineering resources, these companies combined elements of VP10, Daala, and Thor into a unified specification. This collaboration resulted in the release of AV1 (AOMedia Video 1) in 2018, delivering significantly better compression efficiency than previous codecs without requiring licensing payments. Following the initial launch, the alliance expanded to include dozens of other prominent tech leaders, including Apple, Meta, Samsung, and NVIDIA.