The consortium was founded by Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft, Princeton University, Dell, and ARM Holdings in 2015 and now has 57 members across the North America, Asia, and Europe, including Forbes 500 companies and noteworthy academic institutions.

[2] OpenFog was created on November 19, 2015,[3][4][5][6] by ARM Holdings,[7] Cisco Systems,[8] Dell,[9] Intel,[10] Microsoft,[11] and Princeton University.

[12] The idea for a consortium centered on the advancement and dissemination of fog computing was thought up by Helder Antunes, a Cisco executive with a history in IoT, Mung Chiang, then a Princeton University professor and now President of Purdue University,[13] and Dr. Tao Zhang, a Cisco Distinguished Engineer and CIO for the IEEE Communications Society then and now a manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST).

The project was executed from concept to launch by Armando Pereira at PVentures Group, a Silicon Valley–based high-tech consulting firm.

[23] This document outlines the eight pillars of an OpenFog architecture:Security; Scalability; Open; Autonomy; Programmability; RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability); Agility; and Hierarchy.