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On Monday, a new Model Context Protocol security startup called Runlayer<\/a> launched out of stealth with $11 million in seed funding from Khosla Ventures\u2019 Keith Rabois and Felicis.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was created by third-time founder Andrew Berman (previous companies: baby-monitor maker Nanit and an AI video conferencing tool, Vowel, that sold to Zapier in 2024<\/a>).<\/p>\n In the four months since Runlayer launched its product in stealth, it has signed dozens of customers, including eight unicorns or public companies like Gusto, dbt Labs, Instacart, and Opendoor, it says.\u00a0It also nabbed David Soria Parra, the lead creator of MCP, as an angel and advisor, Berman tells TechCrunch.\u00a0(Parra did not respond to our request for comment.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Parra\u2019s team at Anthropic launched the protocol <\/a>in November 2024 as an open source project. MCP has since become the de facto standard for allowing AI agents to connect with the data and systems they need to work independently. It allows agents to access data, move it, alter it, and execute business processes without human oversight.\u00a0<\/p>\n The protocol is now supported by every major model maker including OpenAI<\/a>, Microsoft, AWS, and Google, as well as thousands of tech and enterprise companies<\/a>; just to name a few: Atlassian, Asana, Stripe, Block, and others ranging from banks to consumer goods manufacturers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone talks about AI,\u201d Berman, Runlayer\u2019s CEO, told TechCrunch, \u201cbut AI is really only as useful as the tools and the resources it has access to.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem is, the MCP protocol itself doesn\u2019t include much security out of the box<\/a>, so many MCP implementations have already been found to be vulnerable in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> The poster children are probably GitHub and Asana. In May, researchers at Invariant Labs<\/a> discovered a prompt injection vulnerability in MCP servers that allowed them to grab data from private GitHub repositories (ones that shouldn\u2019t have been accessible to the public).\u00a0Asana discovered and fixed a vulnerability in its MCP server in June<\/a> that could have exposed customer data. There have since been many more types of attacks<\/a> found to work on common MCP server setups.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As you might expect, such security issues have given rise to numerous MCP security products, including products from big-name companies like Cloudflare, Docker, and Wiz \u2014 as well as a host of startups<\/a> tackling more specific products.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most common type of MCP security product these days is a gateway, essentially a security layer for identifying the agents and controlling their access to apps.\u00a0<\/p>\n Runlayer plans to stand out in this crowded market by being an all-in-one security tool that combines a gateway with features like threat detection that analyzes every MCP request; observability that watched all agentic activity across all MCP servers that IT has permitted; enterprise development where IT can build custom AI automations for enterprise users; and detailed permissions that work with existing identity providers like Okta and Entra.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n