AI Weekly Malaysia

Runlayer and Rippling dropped their respective lawsuits with no settlement, no money, and no lawyers' fees paid. Rippling immediately released its own MCP gateway—the product at the center of the dispute—after testing Runlayer's version for over a year with closely integrated engineering teams, never signing on as a customer. Runlayer, which launched from stealth in November 2025 and raised $42M from Khosla Ventures and Felicis, alleged Rippling cloned its product in violation of testing agreements.

Why: If you build AI infrastructure like an MCP gateway, a prospective enterprise customer can spend a year deeply integrating with your product, learn your architecture inside out, then ship a competing product instead of paying you. Founders should treat prolonged pilot engagements with large companies as competitive intelligence risk, not just sales pipeline—tighten contractual protections around what partners can access during evaluation, and consider whether your moat survives a well-resourced competitor replicating the core functionality.