Runlayer, Rippling drop lawsuits. But the brouhaha is still a cautionary tale for founders.

Runlayer and Rippling each dismissed their lawsuits without settlement or fees, after Rippling released its MCP gateway—a product Runlayer claims Rippling copied while testing it for a year. The gateway securely mediates AI agents’ data requests, adding role-based access, observability and token-spend dashboards, positioning Rippling against firms such as Stripe, Ramp, Databricks, Docker and Amazon Bedrock. The episode highlights how rapidly shifting AI markets can turn prospective customers into direct competitors.