MCP: The new USB-C for AI that’s bringing fierce rivals together

MCP has also rapidly begun to gain community support in recent months. For example, just browsing this list of over 300 open source servers shared on GitHub reveals growing interest in standardizing AI-to-tool connections. The collection spans diverse domains, including database connectors like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and vector databases; development tools that integrate with Git repositories and code editors; file system access for various storage platforms; knowledge retrieval systems for documents and websites; and specialized tools for finance, health care, and creative applications.

To make the connections behind the scenes between AI models and data sources, MCP uses a client-server model. An AI model (or its host application) acts as an MCP client that connects to one or more MCP servers. Each server provides access to a specific resource or capability, such as a database, search engine, or file system. When the AI needs information beyond its training data, it sends a request to the appropriate server, which performs the action and returns the result.