Who Founded and Released the AV1 Video Format?

The AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) format is an open, royalty-free video coding format designed for efficient video streaming across the internet. This article explores the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), the non-profit consortium responsible for founding and releasing AV1, detailing its member organizations, development history, and the primary objectives behind the standard.

The Organization Behind AV1: AOMedia

The AV1 video coding format was founded and released by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). AOMedia is a non-profit industry consortium established on September 1, 2015. It operates under the joint development foundation of the Linux Foundation to define and develop open-standard media technologies.

Founding Members and Collaborators

AOMedia was created by a coalition of leading technology companies aiming to solve licensing and efficiency challenges in online video. The seven founding members were:

• Amazon
• Cisco
• Google
• Intel
• Microsoft
• Mozilla
• Netflix

Following its inception, other major tech and media companies joined the alliance as governing members or general members, including Apple, Meta (Facebook), Samsung, Nvidia, AMD, and ARM.

Why AV1 Was Developed

Prior to AV1, high-efficiency video distribution relied heavily on standards like H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC). While effective, HEVC was burdened with complex, fragmented, and expensive patent licensing pools, which created legal uncertainty and high costs for web platforms, hardware manufacturers, and software developers.

AOMedia designed AV1 to provide:

• Royalty-Free Licensing: AV1 is open-source and free to implement, allowing anyone to encode or decode media without paying patent royalties.
• High Efficiency: AV1 delivers approximately 30% greater compression efficiency compared to HEVC and VP9, enabling high-quality 4K and 8K streaming at lower bitrates.
• Broad Interoperability: Because key hardware and software vendors collaborate within AOMedia, the format was engineered for rapid cross-platform support across web browsers, operating systems, and integrated hardware decoders.

Release and Industry Impact

The first version (version 1.0) of the AV1 specification was officially finalized and released by AOMedia on March 28, 2018. Since its debut, AV1 has been widely integrated into modern web browsers like Chrome and Firefox, deployed by major content distribution platforms such as YouTube and Netflix, and built into modern PC, smartphone, and smart TV chipsets.