Runlayer and Rippling have dropped their respective lawsuits against each other, according to court documents seen by TechCrunch. No settlement was made and no money changed hands, including lawyers' fees.
Rippling celebrated by immediately releasing its MCP gateway, the product at the centre of the dueling lawsuits and one that competes with Runlayer's offering.
Runlayer is an early-stage startup that launched out of stealth in November 2025 and has raised $42 million from investors including Khosla Ventures and Felicis. It is led by third-time founder Andrew Berman.
According to Runlayer's lawsuit, Rippling tested Runlayer's MCP gateway for more than a year without becoming a customer. Berman then received a text from a Rippling employee saying his employer was building its own MCP gateway and planned to release it as a product, describing it as a clone of Runlayer's.
Rippling countersued, alleging patent violations, a move Runlayer saw as an attempt to induce it to drop its suit while increasing legal costs. Runlayer dropped its suit after three weeks in discovery, and Rippling also dropped its own suit without collecting a settlement.
An MCP gateway securely handles an enterprise's AI agent requests for data from other software systems, rather than granting agents direct access. Rippling, historically focused on payroll and benefits, has now entered the AI gateway market with a tool that can route to different models and dashboard token spend by employee.