Obot
Founded 2022 · 20 employees on LinkedIn · 2 known investors
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Obot builds an open-source MCP gateway that lets enterprises host, proxy, secure, and monitor MCP servers, providing a centralized control plane for connecting, managing, and scaling AI agents and tools across their systems. It targets organizations adopting AI models and agents that need governance, security, and auditing over AI access.
Also known as obot.ai
Founders & leadership
Obot was founded in 2022 by Shannon Williams, Craig Jellick, Sheng Liang, and Darren Shepherd.
Investors · 2
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Obot provides an enterprise AI control plane combined with a Model Context Protocol (MCP) gateway. The platform lets organizations deploy and host MCP servers, expose them to internal teams through a single gateway endpoint, and apply authentication, policy enforcement, and auditing to every agent action. Users discover "Skills" and MCP servers directly inside AI clients such as Claude, Cursor, and VS Code and connect through Obot gateway URLs, while administrators curate a central registry and catalog of MCP servers and Skills with review and approval workflows.
Core capabilities described by the company include fine-grained role-based access control over which users and teams may discover and call which MCP servers and Skills; integration with identity providers including GitHub, Google, Okta, and Microsoft Entra via SSO and OIDC; full logging of tool calls and LLM requests with exportable request/response trails for compliance reporting; dashboards for governance and visibility across agents, tools, and Skills; and visibility into token consumption by agent, user, and group for cost control. A command-line component, Obot Sentry, scans endpoints to discover shadow MCP servers and AI clients and can disable or quarantine items that fall outside policy.
The software is described as 100% open source and available on GitHub, deployable in the customer's own cloud or on-premises via Docker or Kubernetes, or as a hosted cloud service.
Business model
Obot offers a tiered model around an open-source core: Obot Community, a free and open-source self-hosted control plane that includes Obot Sentry device management for up to 100 devices and up to 100 users with enterprise auth providers subject to registration; Obot Cloud, a hosted instance adding enterprise authentication (SSO and OIDC) with no user limit and a free trial; and Obot Enterprise, self-hosted software with enterprise support and unlimited users and devices, sold via direct contact.
Paid hosted (Obot Cloud) and enterprise self-hosted subscriptions layered on a free open-source edition, with the enterprise tier offered through sales contact and support included.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market
Market position
Obot positions itself as an open-source, self-hostable alternative for enterprise AI governance and MCP infrastructure, emphasizing code transparency, data residency in the customer's own environment, and centralized control over agent actions.
The company emphasizes that the product is fully open source and auditable, can be self-hosted so that customer data does not leave their environment, and consolidates policy control, MCP hosting, shadow-AI discovery, audit logging, and token-spend visibility in a single control plane rather than separate tools.
Technology
Obot centers on the Model Context Protocol: it hosts and proxies MCP servers, offers a catalog and registry of MCP servers and Skills, and fronts connections with SSO/OIDC authentication and RBAC policies. Deployment options include the vendor's cloud or self-hosting through Docker or Kubernetes. Audit logging captures every MCP call, tool call, and LLM request with exportable trails, and the Obot Sentry CLI performs endpoint scanning and quarantine of unmanaged AI clients and MCP servers. The full codebase is published as open source on GitHub for inspection.
Go-to-market
Self-service adoption through the free open-source distribution and a hosted free trial, combined with an enterprise sales motion via demo requests and direct contact; distribution and developer awareness are supported by the public GitHub repository and an MCP server catalog that users reach from within their existing AI clients.
Enterprises and organizational IT, security, and compliance teams adopting AI agents and AI coding or chat clients that require governance, access control, and audit over agent and tool usage.
Compiled by commissioned research from 1 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Founder mafia
2 people who came through Obot went on to found or lead other companies.
In the news
▸Research sources · 1
primary sources listed
- Obotobot.ai · web
1 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Obot do?
- Obot is an open-source enterprise AI control plane and MCP gateway for governing AI agents and tools.
- Who founded Obot?
- Obot was founded by Shannon Williams, Craig Jellick, Sheng Liang, Darren Shepherd in 2022.
- Who are Obot's investors?
- Obot's investors include Mayfield Fund, Nexus Venture Partners.