Operant AI Featured in Gartner's 2025 Market Guide for API Protection and Innovation Report: MCP Gateways

We are thrilled to announce that Operant AI has been featured in two new Gartner reports: the Innovation Insight: MCP Gateways and the Market Guide for API Protection. These reports underscore the growing importance of securing modern application architectures and the pivotal role Operant AI plays in this evolving landscape.

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The news (and why we’re pumped)

Gartner’s MCP research highlights the rise of MCP gateways as the missing enterprise layer for registration, discovery, authentication/authorization, and observability across thousands of MCP servers, along with three core deployment patterns (aggregator, proxy, composite).

In parallel, Gartner’s API report calls out how API security is accelerating with GenAI adoption, emphasizes discovery + posture + runtime protection + testing as table stakes, and maps how WAAP, API gateways, and specialized API protection products fit together.

Bottom line: Operant AI is recognized in both categories, underscoring our unified approach to protect the connective tissue of AI, APIs, and the new execution layer for AI, MCP.  

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MCP ↔ API: Two sides of the same AI runtime

The emergence of Model Context Protocol represents a fundamental shift in how AI applications interact with enterprise resources. As Gartner notes in their Innovation Insight report, over 16,000 MCP servers were delivered in 2025, demonstrating explosive adoption of this new standard for AI-to-system communication.

But here's the critical insight: MCP is essentially a specialized API protocol designed for AI agents. When AI systems need to access databases, call external services, or interact with enterprise applications, they're doing so through MCP servers that fundamentally operate as APIs. This means securing MCP is securing APIs for the AI era.

Enterprise Adoption Challenges: The Security Gap

As MCP spreads from dev sandboxes to production, enterprises need to govern what’s exposed, who can call it, how it’s used, and what gets logged, exactly the concerns historically handled for APIs. Gartner points to gateways as the enforcement layer for OAuth2/OpenID Connect, policy, auditing, and centralized registries/catalogs.

Meanwhile, GenAI is driving API growth (internal + third-party), adding risks like sensitive data exposure, business-logic abuse, and “shadow/zombie” endpoints, requiring continuous discovery, posture management, runtime detection/blocking, and security testing. 

The CNAPP Reality Check

Gartner is explicit about tool fit in API Protection Guide

“CNAPP offers insufficient capabilities when it comes to securing APIs and should not be the primary choice when it comes to API protection today.” — Gartner.

‍That’s what Operant AI has been saying!!!

If APIs are the arteries of your AI, you need purpose-built API protection, and now, with MCP, you need purpose-built MCP controls too. If your plan for API and AI security is “CNAPP + hope,” your APIs and your AI are exposed. Treating CNAPP as your primary API shield creates a false sense of security.

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The Operant AI Advantage: Securing the AI-API Nexus

Our recognition in both reports isn't just about being listed – it's about being at the forefront of a fundamental shift in enterprise security. Here's how Operant AI addresses the convergence of MCP and API security:

‍Comprehensive MCP Gateway Capabilities

We support all three MCP gateway patterns identified by Gartner, with enterprise-grade features including:

• Registry & Catalog: Enterprise-approved MCP servers/clients/tools, with central discovery and policy-backed access.
• Robust authentication and authorization using OAuth2 and OpenID Connect
• Policy enforcement across all MCP interactions of MCP servers, clients, and tools.
• Real-time monitoring and auditing of AI agent activities

Advanced API Protection

Our API protection capabilities specifically address AI-driven threats:

• Multi-layer discovery to identify all APIs, including public, internal and third-party connections used by AI systems
• Runtime protection with behavioral analysis tuned for AI traffic patterns
• AI-aware controls for GenAI apps and agentic workflows, because AI models often depend on third-party APIs and introduce new data-handling risks.
• Continuous posture management for AI application APIs

Net effect: Real-time AI-ready control plane across APIs and MCP, aligning with Gartner’s guidance while addressing AI-specific risks end-to-end.

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Market Validation and Future Outlook

Gartner's prediction that 70% of stand-alone API protection products will be absorbed by cloud WAAP vendors by 2027 highlights the consolidation trend in the security market. However, this consolidation misses the specialized requirements of AI-driven API interactions that require a deep understanding of both domains.

The reports also emphasize the critical importance of compliance in AI deployments, noting new standards like ISO 42001 for AI governance. Our platform addresses these compliance requirements by providing the necessary controls, auditing, and governance capabilities for AI systems that heavily rely on APIs.

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Comprehensive AI Security Leadership

Operant AI's recognition extends beyond just MCP gateways and API protection. We're also featured as a representative provider in 

• Gartner's Market Guide for AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (AI TRISM) 2025, as a representative vendor, underscores our focus on runtime inspection and enforcement across models, applications, agents, and the data flows between them.
• Gartner's “How to Secure Custom-Built AI Agents” 2025 report lays out a pragmatic blueprint for agent security, discovery, strong access control, secure SDLC + testing, and AI-runtime defense, and explicitly lists Operant among vendors for AI runtime security tools relevant to agents.

How does this complete the AI security picture

Our recognition across critical Gartner reports – MCP Gateways, API Protection, AI TRISM, and AI Agent Security – positions Operant AI uniquely in the market. We're not just solving point problems; we're addressing the complete AI security ecosystem.

As enterprises navigate the complex landscape of AI adoption, they need security solutions that understand the fundamental interconnections between:

• AI systems and their API dependencies
• MCP protocols and enterprise resource access
• AI agents and their runtime behaviors
• AI governance and operational security

The recognition across multiple Gartner reports validates our comprehensive approach: you cannot secure AI in isolation. Modern AI security requires integrated protection across APIs, protocols, agents, and governance frameworks. You cannot secure AI without securing APIs, and you cannot effectively secure APIs without understanding AI workflows

The convergence of MCP, API security, AI, and agent protection isn't just a technical trend; it's the foundation of secure AI adoption at enterprise scale. As AI continues to reshape enterprise architectures, we're ready to secure the future of intelligent applications. And we're proud to be leading that charge across the entire AI security landscape. 

Want to see how Operant AI can secure your entire AI landscape in under five minutes of deploy time? Let’s talk. Book a Demo now