FIWARE Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes the adoption of open standards using open-source technologies for the development of innovative smart solutions, is announcing Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) as a new Associate Member of the FIWARE ecosystem. Together, the two organizations will be well-positioned to foster a global data interoperable framework based on open standards, enabling legal entities from mobility, industrial, and other economic sectors to be identified and approved.

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation, established by the Financial Stability Board, is recognized for its pioneering work in supporting the implementation and use of the 20-digit Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) code, ensuring a standardized approach to identifying legal entities across borders. This identifier system is now critical for accurate legal verification in global transactions, addressing a vital need for security and traceability. GLEIF has also introduced a new form of digitized organizational identity – the verifiable LEI (vLEI). The vLEI is a standardized, digitized version of the LEI capable of enabling instant, automated trust between legal entities and their authorized representatives, and the counterparty legal entities and representatives with which they interact.

We are very proud to sign this extremely important agreement with GLEIF and welcome them in the FIWARE global community. This collaboration marks a significant step forward in our mission to promote data interoperability, data provenance, decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials standards on a global scale. In the frame of our partnership, we are aiming to integrate the vLEI into our technical framework, aligning with our open-source and open standards approach. Together, we will advance the utility of LEIs worldwide and collaborate on data interoperability, data provenance, data platform, and data spaces.

Said Chandra Challagonda, CEO of FIWARE Foundation.

We are committed to realizing our shared vision of empowering organizations across diverse sectors with trusted digital identities. By extending the application of vLEI technology into various industries, we aim to foster transparency, strengthen compliance, and enable seamless interactions across global value chains. This collaboration underscores our dedication to building a more interconnected, secure and trusted digital landscape – founded on an open, decentralized, commercially neutral, and global digital identity system.

Said Alexandre Kech, CEO of GLEIF.

The membership aligns both organizations’ goals and offers mutual benefits for further strategic collaboration:

• Enhanced Access to Interested Parties: Through FIWARE’s extensive global network and ecosystem, the non-profit organization will help bring the vLEI to diverse sectors such as mobility, logistics, and industry applications.
• Strengthened Data Provenance: By adopting the vLEI implementation, which ensures advanced data provenance, FIWARE can provide a reliable method to trace and verify data integrity in real time, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards, such as the upcoming EU AI Act, which emphasizes data transparency and demands the provenance of the data which has been used to train Artificial Intelligence models.
• Global Standards and Interoperability: FIWARE and GLEIF will work toward a universally adaptable data interoperability framework, facilitating seamless international data exchanges and positioning both organizations as leaders in legal entity data integration.
• Accelerating Opportunities: Initiating and implementing new European Research and Development (R&D) projects on data integrity, interoperability, and open standards, with, for example, particular interest in post-quantum cryptography technologies.

FIWARE will also join GLEIF’s vLEI Technical Advisory Board. The Board was established in 2024 to develop standards, build partnerships, and facilitate scalability and interoperability of the vLEI. The Board works with GLEIF to facilitate ecosystem growth by supporting the system’s scalability and technical interoperability, promoting related use cases and participating in pilot projects, building partnerships, and strengthening ties with the open-source community to enable seamless adoption of vLEIs on a global scale.

Learn more about how data provenance, enhanced by FIWARE’s technologies, enables building transparent and compliant digital ecosystems: Read the blogpost