SAN FRANCISCO — April 28, 2021 — The Bytecode Alliance, a community dedicated to creating new software foundations, building on standards such as WebAssembly and WebAssembly System Interface (WASI), today announced incorporation as a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization. Incorporated by Fastly, Intel, Mozilla and Microsoft, the Bytecode Alliance now invites organizations to join its cross-industry collaborative mission alongside new members Arm, DFINITY Foundation, Embark Studios, Google, Shopify, and University of California at San Diego.

These organizations share a vision of a WebAssembly ecosystem that fixes cracks in today’s software foundations that are holding the industry and its software supply chains back from a secure, performant, cross-platform and cross-device future. Bytecode Alliance members believe effective multi-stakeholder collaboration is vital to achieving this vision of software foundations that enable security, efficiency, and modularity to coexist across the widest possible range of devices and architectures.

The Bytecode Alliance, founded in 2019, has helped bring attention to the inherent weaknesses in predominant models for building software, which rely heavily on composing up to thousands of third-party modules without security boundaries between them. These weaknesses in the software supply chain have historically been instrumental in breaching government systems, critical infrastructure services, and a large number of companies, as well as in stealing personal information of hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions of people. Solving these challenges will require efforts across many industries. With an open governance model and a growing list of member organizations, the Bytecode Alliance will scale its efforts to contribute solutions to this space in support of its mission.

Organizations passionate about contributing to this mission and building new, more secure foundations for the cloud, the edge, the Internet of Things, and many other environments and platforms, are invited to apply to become members. Membership applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, but those submitted in the near future will have an opportunity to participate in full board elections in the second half of 2021.

Collaboration across the industry to build stronger software foundations is crucial to securing the future of a safer and more efficient web. The WebAssembly ecosystem is an exciting, powerful world that will make possible a lot of ‘what ifs’ in building secure applications and software across clients, origins, and the edge. Every bit of progress the Bytecode Alliance makes to standardize these software development practices is another chapter in computing history. Fastly is thrilled to be an incorporating member and to welcome new and future Alliance members who share this vision. -- Tyler McMullen, CTO at Fastly

As an incorporating member of the Bytecode Alliance, Intel welcomes the new members and recognizes the importance of a secure and open WebAssembly ecosystem driven by industry collaboration. Intel continues to extend WebAssembly’s performance and security benefits outside of the browser, most recently driving the WebAssembly System Interface for Neural Network specification and implementation in Wasmtime to enable higher machine learning inferencing performance in WebAssembly. -- Mark Skarpness, VP, Intel Architecture, Graphics, and Software; General Manager, System Software Engineering at Intel

We have a real opportunity to change how software is built, and in doing so, enable small teams to build big things that are both secure and fast. Mozilla believes that WebAssembly has the right technical ingredients to build a better, more secure Internet, and that the Bytecode Alliance has the vision and momentum to make it happen. -- Bobby Holley, Distinguished Engineer at Mozilla and Bytecode Alliance Board Member

Microsoft is excited to join the Bytecode Alliance as an incorporating member to support the effort to build a more open, scalable, secure web. WebAssembly and the emerging WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) specification enable cloud-native solutions to become more secure by default and help solve computing challenges across a variety of environments, including the ‘tiny edge’ of systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) and microcontroller units (MCUs). Microsoft looks forward to collaborating with the Bytecode Alliance members and community as this ecosystem continues to rapidly innovate and grow. -- Ralph Squillace, Principal Program Manager, Azure Core Upstream at Microsoft and Bytecode Alliance Board Member