New startup ideas · AI and software · Agent infrastructure
startup idea
Toolharbor
The governed registry every enterprise agent must pass through to touch a tool.
Toolharbor is a control plane that sits between an enterprise's AI agents and every tool, API, and MCP server they call, enforcing policy, credentials, and rate limits per agent.
- Software subscription
- Enterprise
- $10-100B market
- Platform others build on
- US first
5/5
venture judge
9
similar startups, last 2 years (32 all-time)
97%
of 3 nearest real companies still alive
yes
8 matching federal grants and programs
Direction supported by government programs and grants
Scorecard
One score that balances how trendy the idea is, the demand for it and its potential for 100x, with competition measured relative to every other idea in the catalog. Recent startup trends first, government priorities second.
68
Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 41.7 x 1.64
Active
competition: more crowded than 69% of ideas · headwind x0.65
+2.8
government priorities, secondary (17 matching grants)
Trend
45
Is the wave forming now? 2025-26 entrants vs 2023-24, rounds since 2025, the sector's live-batch direction, the 2026 trend analyst.
- Entrants 2025-26 vs 2023-24 (similar companies)23
- Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector8
- Sector direction (live batch)100
- 2026 trend analyst50
Demand
60
Does anyone want it? YC's current RFS, companies already paid for something similar, the operator judge, founders' yes-rate in decks, readers who would run the test.
- YC asks for it (current RFS: idea / sector)30
- Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)100
- Operator judge: real pain50
100x potential
78
Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.
- Venture judge100
- Market size axis67
- Moat axis100
- Neighbours still alive74
- Technologist judge25
Score = 100 x cbrt(Trend x Demand x 100x) x (1 - 0.5 x crowding) + government bonus (max 5), calibrated so the 95th-percentile idea scores 90 (order never changes). A geometric mean: a weak pillar cannot be papered over. Percentiles are among the 272 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were governed, registry, enterprise, must, pass, control, plane, sits.
The idea in full
- What
- Toolharbor is a control plane that sits between an enterprise's AI agents and every tool, API, and MCP server they call, enforcing policy, credentials, and rate limits per agent. Software vendors and integrators publish certified connectors into its registry, so an enterprise turns on Salesforce or SAP access for agents in minutes instead of building bespoke glue. Enterprises pay per governed agent; connector publishers build on the platform because that is where the buyers are.
- Why now
- This cluster added 126 new companies in 2026 alone and the tooling is fragmenting fast: Executor is shipping an open source integration management layer and Decawork a control plane for IT teams, which means enterprises are about to standardize on some governance layer within 12-24 months, and whoever gets the connector ecosystem wins it.
- Wedge: first customer and entry point
- One managed service provider that administers IT for 200 mid-size enterprises; give the MSP a multi-tenant console and revenue share, and every governed rollout they do becomes Toolharbor seats.
- Path to 100x
- Enterprise middleware and integration is a $10-100B market and it re-forms around agents exactly once; the platform mechanism is that each new certified connector makes Toolharbor more valuable to every enterprise and each enterprise makes it more valuable to publishers, the same dynamic that made one iPaaS vendor dominant last cycle. The compounding asset is the cross-customer telemetry of which agent-tool calls fail, drift, or get abused, which becomes a risk-scoring dataset no single enterprise or open source project can replicate.
- Ceiling
- If agent-tool calling standardizes so cleanly that governance is trivial, Toolharbor is a mid-size security tool rather than the platform layer.
- Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
- Executor is open source integration management and will win developers, but has no channel motion and no governance telemetry product; Decawork targets IT teams directly rather than building a two-sided connector platform; OneCLI secures the assistant, not the tool boundary underneath every assistant.
- Main risk
- MCP governance gets absorbed as a free feature of the model providers' own enterprise plans before an independent layer establishes itself.
Five judges
Each judge scores every idea in the catalog with a named rubric; the venture judge decides whether a card is shown at all (4-5 is venture-grade).
Venture investor
5/5
Capital-light control plane on $10-100B middleware spend, MSP channel for 200 enterprises at once, and cross-customer failure telemetry that compounds.
Bootstrapper
3/5
Capital-light with a 200-enterprise MSP channel and revenue within a year, but model providers bundling governance free is a live pricing collapse.
Operator
3/5
Real IT buyer and MSP channel, but agent-tool governance is an anticipated line item rather than a bill enterprises pay today.
Technologist
2/5
A policy gateway in front of MCP calls is exactly the feature model providers bundle into enterprise plans, as the card's own risk states.
Risk
2/5
Launch rides one MSP with 200 clients, and model providers bundling MCP governance free would erase the layer before it lands.
trends
3/5
The 12-24 month MCP governance window is genuinely current, yet 102 of 244 agent-infra companies rewriting pitches shows the layer already contested.
Similar startups in the directory
Companies whose pitch matches most of the idea's terms (governed, registry, enterprise, must, pass, control, plane, sits): 32 all-time, 9 from the last two years. Same matching as Idea Check.
Cinchy | PeriMind (AI Governance Platform)
The Control Plane for Enterprise Agents
Use Radiant's control plane to easily deploy, manage, and scale generative AI features for critical workflows
The Agent Control Plane for IT teams
Automated production-readiness platform for the AI coding era
Vallum optimizes enterprise AI usage by measuring ROI, boosting adoption, and governing interactions.
Wayfound is a platform that manages, monitors, and governs enterprise AI agents in real time, ensuring compliance, performance, and explainable behavior.
Credo AI is an adaptive AI governance platform that facilitates responsible AI adoption by translating policy and regulatory standards into actionable controls, thereby ensuring compliance, mitigating risks, and fostering trust among stakeholders.
The default way of running on-device AI at Scale
Agentic AI Security and Governance
Build controlled, governed, and reliable AI workflows and agents for your core operations.
Independent insurance brokerage for startups.
The generator's reference companies
Real companies the model named as closest when it wrote the card, with their fate. A check mark is a company the radar could verify in its directory.
Public money in this direction
US federal grants, SBIR/STTR awards and open opportunities from the radar's public-money feed, matched to the idea's terms; the sector totals give the context.
8
grants and programs matching the idea
35
startup-relevant grants in Agent infrastructure
$15M
awarded in the sector, tracked
1
opportunities open now in the sector
- NSF Safe-OSE: Center for Security-Assuring AI Agent Communication and Interoperability Standard and the Open-Source Ecosystemawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · SafeOSE · $2M · posted 2026-08-18
- Collaborative Research: Make-it-Anywhere Distributed Additive Manufacturing: Enabling Part Quality Equivalence through Physics- and Data-Integrated Process Controlawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · MSI-Manufacturing Systms Integ · $305K · posted 2026-08-17
- I-Corps: Translation Potential of Ferroelectric Materials with Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (FeSQUID) Cryogenic Control Electronics for Quantum Computingawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · TIP-CHIPS KTA-3 Quantum · $50K · posted 2026-08-17
- Collaborative Research: Make-it-Anywhere Distributed Additive Manufacturing: Enabling Part Quality Equivalence through Physics- and Data-Integrated Process Controlawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · OE Operations Engineering, MSI-Manufacturing Systms Integ · $195K · posted 2026-08-17
National Science Foundation · HBCU-EiR - HBCU-Excellence in · $551K · posted 2026-08-14
- Collaborative Research: Learning In-Context Improvement for Robotic Systems via Training-Time Failure Simulationawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · FRR-Foundationl Rsrch Robotics · $320K · posted 2026-08-11
- Collaborative Research: Learning In-Context Improvement for Robotic Systems via Training-Time Failure Simulationawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · FRR-Foundationl Rsrch Robotics · $360K · posted 2026-08-11
- Collaborative Research: SmartSOM: Self-Organizing Manufacturing with Task Constraints and Social-Organizational Learningawardmedium relevance
National Science Foundation · MSI-Manufacturing Systms Integ · $250K · posted 2026-07-29
Market signal
What the radar sees in Agent infrastructure: new companies by cohort year, the forming YC batch, and outcomes since the February snapshot.
Agent infrastructure · 27 → 63 → 106 → 148 → 126 new companies 2022 → 2026 · 95% aliveYC S26: 39 in this cluster, 16% of the batch (was 17% in X26) (F26 is still forming: 21 listed)Since February, of 244 YC companies here: 7 acquired, 2 shut down, 102 rewrote their pitch
Design attributes
The card is one cell of a designed set: every axis below was chosen before the text was written, and the text had to realize it.
- Buyer
- Enterprise
- Business model
- Software subscription
- Path to 100x
- Platform others build on
- Market size
- $10-100B market
- Capital intensity
- Capital-light (software margins)
- Speed to revenue
- Revenue within a year
- Technical depth
- Real engineering
- Go-to-market
- Partners and channels
- Moat
- Data moat
- Geography
- US first
- Regulation
- Some regulation
- Vibe
- Hot space
Listed under
An idea sits in its own sector and in any sector its text clearly touches.
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