Landscape · deep-dive · GLEIF / LEI (ISO 17442)

agentic-first vs GLEIF / LEI.

An LEI is a 20-character globally unique identifier for a legal entity - the verifiability anchor agentic-first sits on top of. LEI tells you which legal entity; agentic-first tells you everything else about that entity that an agent should know. They aren't competitors; LEI is the foundation agentic-first cites.

What an LEI is

The Legal Entity Identifier is defined by ISO 17442 and operated by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF). Every LEI is a 20-character string uniquely assigned to one legal entity - a parent company, a subsidiary, a fund, a securitisation vehicle. It's mandated for financial counterparties under MiFID II, EMIR, and Dodd-Frank since 2017, and adoption is now well over 2.6 million entities globally.

Each LEI links to a public reference record at https://api.gleif.org/api/v1/lei-records/<lei> that carries the registered legal name, jurisdiction, registry ID, headquarters address, parent relationships, and registration status. It is the closest thing the world has to a universal company identifier, and it's free to look up.

Why LEI alone isn't a profile

An LEI tells you a legal entity exists, where it's incorporated, who its parent is, and that the registration is current. It does not tell you what stage the company is at, what its banded revenue looks like, who the key people are, what the contact preference is, or where to find the protected-tier MCP. Those live somewhere else - and historically that "somewhere else" has been a data broker.

agentic-first is the file that publishes the rest, on the company's own website, with the LEI inside it as the global identity anchor.

Side-by-side

Question	GLEIF / LEI	agentic-first
What it is	20-character identifier + the GLEIF reference record	JSON profile file the publisher hosts themselves
Owner	GLEIF (issued via Local Operating Units)	The publisher
Where it lives	GLEIF's public registry	`/.well-known/agentic-profile.json` on the publisher's domain
Cost	~$50–150/year per entity (varies by LOU)	Free; lowest-bar is a single static file
What it carries	Legal name, jurisdiction, parent, registration status, registry ID	All of the above (by reference) plus stage, banded financials, team, contact preference, evidence, protected-tier pointer
Audience	Banks, brokers, regulators, financial counterparties	Agents, directories, investors, customers, the publisher's own ops team
Mandatory for	Anyone trading regulated financial instruments	Nobody - voluntary

How they compose inside an agentic-first profile

The LEI sits as a top-level field inside the company block. The directory verifies it against GLEIF's public API at submission and re-checks on every revalidation:

{
  "schema_version": "0.1.0",
  "updated_at":     "2026-04-19T00:00:00Z",
  "profile_kind":   "company",
  "tier":           "public",
  "company": {
    "name":         "Acme Robotics",
    "legal_name":   "Acme Robotics Ltd",
    "website":      "https://acme-robotics.example",
    "jurisdiction": "GB",
    "registry": {
      "type": "companies-house",
      "id":   "12345678",
      "url":  "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12345678"
    },
    "lei":          "5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12"
  }
}

With both a verified registry ID and a valid LEI, the profile clears the bar for the directory's verified badge. Either alone qualifies; neither is sufficient for the highest-confidence surfacing.

When you do - and don't - need an LEI

You need an LEI today if you trade derivatives, transact in regulated financial markets, or sit inside the EMIR / MiFID II / Dodd-Frank counterparty universe. Most B2B SaaS companies don't.
You'd benefit from one if you raise from institutional investors, deal with regulated buyers, or want the highest-confidence verification on the agentic-first directory.
You don't need one for a v0.1 profile - a verified Companies House (or Delaware, or EDGAR, or ASIC) registry ID is sufficient to clear the verification bar. The LEI is additive.

The honest summary

LEI is the global identifier the world settled on after the 2008 financial crisis, and it's mature, free to look up, and cryptographically anchored to a public reference record. It's exactly the kind of identifier we want every serious agentic-first profile to carry. We don't compete with GLEIF; we cite GLEIF. The work in our v0.1 was deciding to make registry-or-LEI the gate for the verified badge, so the trust surface scales as adoption scales.

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