PALO ALTO, Calif., April 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Docker, Inc.®, a leading provider of cloud-native application development tools, content, and services for developers, today announced a major expansion of its AI initiative with the upcoming Docker MCP Catalog and Docker MCP Toolkit. Built around the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP), these new offerings bring Docker’s signature developer experience to the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem.
The Docker MCP Catalog, integrated into Docker Hub, provides developers a centralized way to discover verified and curated MCP tools. The Docker MCP Toolkit enables developers to run, authenticate, and manage MCP tools with the simplicity, security, and usability they expect from Docker. Paired with new enterprise-ready tooling, the initiative helps developers put AI to work without reinventing their workflow.
“Building functional AI applications shouldn’t feel radically different from building any other app,” said Docker President and COO Mark Cavage. “Developers want to integrate AI into their existing workflows–build locally, test, and ship to production with confidence. With agentic tools starting to behave like full-fledged software systems, the old challenges of packaging, versioning, and authentication come back fast. The Docker MCP Catalog brings that all together in one place, a trusted, developer-friendly experience within Docker Hub, where tools are verified, secure, and easy to run.”
Partnering with Industry Leaders to Simplify MCP Development
Docker is partnering with some of the most trusted names in cloud, developer tooling, and AI — including Elastic, Heroku at Salesforce, New Relic, Stripe and many more — to shape a secure, developer-first ecosystem for MCP tools. From Docker Desktop to leading MCP clients like Docker AI Agent, Claude, continue.dev, Cursor, Goose, VS Code, and Windsurf, integrating powerful and capable AI agents into real workflows is about to get a whole lot easier.
Developers can discover and run 100+ MCP servers directly from the Docker Desktop extension. These servers will also be hosted on Docker Hub, complete with verified instructions for running them with any MCP client. It’s all part of our mission to make building with AI as simple, secure, and familiar as any other app workflow.
With a growing ecosystem of trusted, verified MCP servers and clients, Docker is delivering the security, consistency, and scalability enterprises need to confidently use AI-powered tools.
“Docker’s new MCP Catalog is a meaningful step forward in secure software delivery,” said Paul Nashawaty, Practice Lead and Principal Analyst at theCUBE Research. “With features like Registry Access Management and built-in secret management, Docker is addressing the growing enterprise demand for supply chain security. That demand is expected to reach 70 percent adoption by 2026, up from just 10 percent in 2022. At the same time, its AI tooling, including Docker Model Runner and Docker AI Agent, simplifies how developers build and run models locally. This is critical in a market where global AI software spend is projected to exceed 300 billion dollars by 2026. Docker is positioning itself at the intersection of containerization and AI, where speed, consistency, and security are essential.”
Enterprise-Ready and Built on the Trust of Docker Hub
Docker MCP Catalog is built on the scale and reliability of Docker Hub, the world’s largest container registry with over 14 million images and millions of developers. Future releases will enable teams to publish and manage their own MCP servers with full enterprise controls, including Registry Access Management (RAM) and Image Access Management (IAM), plus seamless secret storage integrated into Docker Desktop.
Today’s announcement builds on a wave of recent momentum in Docker’s AI strategy, including the beta launch of Docker AI Agent, a context-aware assistant integrated into Docker Desktop and CLI, and Docker Model Runner, a fast, secure way to run AI models locally with the same simplicity as running a container. Together, these tools are making it easier for developers to build, test, and deploy AI-powered applications—without friction or complexity. The Docker MCP Catalog makes it easy to discover and trust MCP tools — join here to help shape how the world builds with AI and MCPs.
The Industry Rallies to Build a Simpler AI Future for Developers
Nate Sesti, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, continue.dev
At Continue, we understand the frustration of spending more time tinkering with AI systems than actually coding. Docker's MCP Catalog works seamlessly with our curated server blocks on hub.continue.dev by handling the technical complexity—from authentication to configuration—so you can focus on what matters: building assistants that fit your workflow perfectly. This gives developers the power to create AI-native tools that amplify capabilities without sacrificing control.
Shay Banon, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Elastic
“MCP is a significant innovation for agent builders. By bringing the Elasticsearch MCP server to the Docker MCP Catalog, we’re enabling more teams to leverage Elasticsearch for AI agents with secure, scalable vector database and hybrid search capabilities.”
Chris Marchbanks, Principal Software Engineer, Grafana Labs
“By partnering with Docker, we’re making it easy to discover and run 20+ tools within the Grafana MCP server in secure, containerized environments. This gives MCP clients and AI agents instant, programmatic access to observability data and workflows across dashboards, alerts, incidents, and on-call schedules. With Grafana MCP servers, developers can build smarter, more connected agents. The possibilities are wide open.”
Ross Kukulinski, Vice President of Product, Kong Inc.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Docker to distribute our newly launched MCP Server for the Kong Konnect platform. This makes it easier than ever for developers to discover and integrate Kong Konnect APIs into their AI agents and applications, enabling real-time API discovery, analytics, and configuration management. By combining the reach of Docker’s MCP Catalog with the security of the Toolkit, we’re one step closer to our mission: enabling any company to securely adopt AI and embrace an API-first approach.”
Michael Hunger, Vice President of Product Innovation, Neo4j
“We’re excited to see Docker advancing the MCP ecosystem with MCP Catalog and Toolkit, making secure integration and hosting of MCP servers much easier. As the leading graph database for AI-native applications, Neo4j helps developers create grounded and explainable agents by providing relevant context through connected data. We're proud to be a launch partner and contribute Neo4j MCP servers to this initiative — and to continue our shared mission of empowering developers to build smarter AI applications, faster.”
Camden Swita, Head of AI and ML Innovation, New Relic
“New Relic is committed to its open partner ecosystem and working with partners like Docker to bring much-needed simplicity and trust to AI-native development. New Relic continues to lead the industry in AI and observability by joining Docker's MCP Catalog and Toolkit and bringing intelligent observability to developers building the next generation of applications.”
Joe Duffy, Founder and CEO, Pulumi
“Pulumi’s MCP server puts the cloud at your fingertips in your favorite AI tools. Powered by infrastructure as code, it can spin up modern infrastructure anywhere, with 1,000s of cloud and SaaS providers supported on day one. We’re excited to partner on Docker's MCP Catalog and Toolkit to deliver AI-assisted cloud management with enhanced security and enterprise-readiness to our shared customers, the cloud builders and innovators.”
Betty Junod, CMO and Senior Vice President, Heroku at Salesforce
“The Heroku MCP Server unlocks new levels of automation, efficiency, and intelligence for managing custom applications running in production on the Heroku AI PaaS including: lifecycle management, database operations, managing third party add-ons, application scaling, performance, and more. At Heroku, we believe in meeting developers where they are in the languages and tools they love to be their most creative and productive. We’re excited to have the Heroku MCP Server bring the power of our platform directly to the Docker Desktop developer experience.”
Jeff Weinstein, Product Lead, Stripe
"With Docker MCP Toolkit, you can spin up Stripe MCP in an isolated container—making it fast and easy for developers to integrate Stripe into your AI workflows."
Utkarsh Sengar, Vice President, Engineering, Webflow
"We launched the Webflow MCP Server to let agents and developers interact with our API the same way they work with code—inline and in context. Docker takes that experience even further by removing friction around credential management for Docker users. We’re proud to be a launch partner for the Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit and excited to support the next wave of innovation in building and delivering online experiences."
Resources
- Blog: Dockerizing MCP - Bringing Discovery, Simplicity, and Trust to the Ecosystem
- Blog: Introducing Docker Model Runner
- Blog: Introducing the Beta Launch of Docker’s AI Agent, Transforming Development Experiences
- Learn more at Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit
About Docker
Docker drives modern software development by making it easy to adopt container technology to radically boost productivity, security, testing, and collaboration at every step of the developer experience. Embraced by over 20 million developers worldwide, Docker’s unmatched flexibility and choice make it the preferred tool for developers seeking efficiency and innovation for creating modern applications. Learn more about Docker at www.docker.com.
Contact David Oro press@docker.com
