My company is building AI products. Should I adopt the NIST AI RMF, the EU AI Act, or both?

They solve different problems and most organizations end up adopting both.

• NIST AI RMF 1.0 is a voluntary US framework organized around four functions — Govern, Map, Measure, Manage. It is the most widely adopted internal program backbone because it is risk-based, technology-neutral, and free. Use it to structure your AI inventory, risk assessments, and control mappings.
• The EU AI Act is binding law for any organization that places an AI system on the EU market or whose output is used in the EU. It classifies systems by risk (prohibited, high-risk, limited-risk, minimal-risk) and imposes obligations on providers and deployers — conformity assessments, technical documentation (Annex IV), post-market monitoring, and, for GPAI models, training-data summaries (Art. 53).
• ISO/IEC 42001 is the certifiable AI management system standard. It pairs well with NIST AI RMF as the internal program and is increasingly requested in enterprise procurement.

Practical recommendation: adopt NIST AI RMF as your internal operating model, map your controls to the EU AI Act for any product touching the EU, and pursue ISO/IEC 42001 certification when customers start asking. Platforms like Credo AI provide pre-built control mappings across all three so you do not have to maintain the crosswalk by hand.