Runlayer, the New York-based enterprise AI agent governance platform, secured a $30 million Series A, led by Felicis and joined by Khosla Ventures, bringing its total funding to $42 million to fuel rapid expansion in the agentic AI control plane market.
Runlayer, a New York-based startup founded in 2025, announced a $30 million Series A funding round, led by Felicis with participation from Khosla Ventures. This brings the company’s total funding to approximately $42 million since its $11 million seed round in November 2025 (also from the same lead investors). The round was reportedly preempted, with Vinod Khosla expressing strong interest in taking every available dollar, signaling high conviction from backers in the rapidly evolving agentic AI infrastructure space.
What is Runlayer?
Runlayer positions itself as the “golden path” for enterprises to adopt AI agents at scale. It provides a unified platform that combines AI enablement (making it easy for employees to build and deploy agents) with security, governance, and control (preventing shadow AI, enforcing policies, and providing observability).
Key features include:
- Access to 18,000+ MCPs (Model Context Protocol servers) for tools, plus internal custom MCPs, skills, and plugins.
- Governed agent creation: Employees describe tasks in familiar workspaces; the platform assembles agents with scoped permissions, memory, triggers, and approved tools.
- Shadow AI discovery and runtime security: Real time scanning of tool calls, outputs, intent, and sensitive data.
- Centralized identity, access controls, budget/spend management, audit logs, and visibility across multiple AI clients (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Salesforce Agentforce, IDEs).
- MCP gateway functionality enhanced with cataloging, reusability, policy enforcement, and interoperability.
It addresses the gap between rapid AI adoption (especially post MCP standardization) and enterprise needs for security and scalability. Traditional approaches lead to fragmented governance, manual reviews, and risks like uncontrolled agents exhausting budgets or accessing unauthorized data. Runlayer acts as a neutral, model agnostic control plane and “corporate app store” for agents.
Who founded Runlayer?
- CEO Andrew Berman: Serial entrepreneur with strong AI and enterprise credentials. Co-founded Nanit (AI powered baby monitor, significant revenue) and Vowel (AI video platform acquired by Zapier). Served as Director of AI at Zapier, where the team shipped early MCP integrations and agents used by millions. He started Runlayer shortly after having his first child, driven by observed enterprise demand.
- Co-founders Vitor Balocco and Tal Peretz: Deep technical expertise from Zapier (Tal led ML in the Israeli Air Force and helped launch Zapier MCP quickly). The team has direct experience building with OpenAI and Anthropic.
Advisors include David Soria Parra (co-creator of MCP at Anthropic) and Travis McPeak (Head of Security at Cursor).
The company is small (~20-25 people, mostly engineers) but shipping rapidly.
In roughly six to seven months since emerging from stealth (with the seed), Runlayer has achieved notable adoption:
- Dozens of customers, including over 12 unicorns/public companies such as Instacart, Gusto (half the company using it daily), Opendoor, dbt Labs, AngelList, Lemonade, Decagon, and others.
- Fortune 500 penetration, including a major bank monitoring AI activity for 100,000+ employees across 200,000 devices.
- Strong testimonials from CISOs and AI leaders (e.g., Gusto’s CISO/CIO Mike Wittig on unlocking new ways of working; Jane’s Chief AI Transformation Officer on it becoming the backbone of strategy).
This traction highlights product market fit in a hot market where companies struggle with agent sprawl.
The funding arrives amid explosive growth in agentic AI. Gartner projects 40% of enterprise applications will include AI agents by end-2026 (up from <5% in 2025), with massive spending forecasts. MCP has emerged as a key open standard for connecting agents to tools/data, accelerating adoption but also risks (shadow AI, data leaks, uncontrolled costs).
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Runlayer operates at the intersection of AI enablement and cybersecurity. The agentic AI security market is projected to grow dramatically, and while incumbents (e.g., Palo Alto, Okta, Wiz) are entering, Runlayer differentiates as a neutral, cross platform layer focused on both enablement and governance rather than pure “tax” controls.
Its early focus on MCP (tied to Anthropic origins) and expansion into broader agent workflows positions it well.
Felicis and Khosla’s repeat investment and preemption underscore belief in the team’s execution (nine months ahead of seed roadmap) and the category’s inevitability. Investors view governance not as a barrier but as the “unlock” for broad AI transformation.
Proceeds will accelerate product development (expanding beyond MCP focus) and enterprise go to market efforts to capture more of the market as adoption scales.
The space is competitive, with other MCP/security startups (e.g., Operant AI, Helmet Security) and broader players building governance. Runlayer’s advantages include founder pedigree, early MCP ties, rapid customer wins with sophisticated buyers, and a balanced enablement + security approach.
Potential challenges include execution against incumbents, evolving standards/protocols, proving long term defensibility (e.g., via network effects in the control plane), and sustaining growth in a crowded AI infrastructure market. Revenue details are not public, but strong usage metrics (e.g., at Gusto) suggest momentum.
This Series A reflects validated demand for enterprise AI infrastructure that balances innovation speed with necessary controls. Runlayer has moved quickly from seed to meaningful scale, backed by top tier investors who see it as foundational for the agent driven workplace. The round positions the company to expand its platform and customer base as more organizations commit to becoming “AI native.”
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