The Linux Foundation launched a new initiative Thursday that will fund the ongoing high-quality, open development and enhancement of projects within the Chromium web-browser project ecosystem.

The foundation, a nonprofit that supports open-source projects, said the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers initiative aims to provide a neutral space where industry leaders, developers, academia and the open-source community can collaborate to support Chromium.

This project is best known for powering browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, the privacy-focused Brave and the highly customizable Vivaldi. As an open-source browser codebase, Chromium is highly extensible, meaning that it can be used to build numerous applications beyond browsers using its components.

“With the launch of the Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers, we are taking another step forward in empowering the open-source community,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “This project will provide much-needed funding and development support for open development of projects within the Chromium ecosystem.”

Multiple big tech companies have already pledged support for the initiative, including Google LLC, Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc. and Opera Ltd.

The Linux Foundation said Chromium projects will remain under their own current governance, while the new Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers will be run by the foundation itself.

The Chromium project was originally launched in 2008 by Google as the foundation for the Chrome web browser. The codebase was released at the time under a permissive open-source license and named after the metal used to make chrome. In 2024, Google made over 100,000 commits to the Chromium project, accounting for about 94% of contributions. The company said it has no intention of reducing its commitments.

In a blog post, Google revealed that the company invests heavily in shared infrastructure for the open-source project in the form of thousands of testing servers. Google said this involves having thousands of servers endless running millions of tests to handle hundreds of bugs per day to maintain the project representing “millions of U.S. dollars in annual investment.”

Microsoft switched its Edge browser to Chromium in 2020, which the company said would provide users with improved compatibility with web sites, increase battery life on devices and deliver better hardware integration. Edge was the company’s successor to Internet Explorer, which had been the company’s flagship browser since 1995 until the company began to roll out Edge in 2015 and finally retired support for IE in 2022.

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