Kong

API gateway and service connectivity platform.

konghq.com

HQ: San Francisco, CA, USA

Developer Tools

Company research

Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals

Updated Aug 2, 2026

Overview

Kong Inc. is a privately held API and AI connectivity software company. Founded in Milan as Mashape, it evolved from an API marketplace into open-source API infrastructure and now provides a unified platform for securing, managing, governing, observing, and monetizing API, AI, and event traffic across cloud, hybrid, Kubernetes, and data-center environments.

Primary product

Kong Konnect, a managed API and AI connectivity platform built around Kong API Gateway, Kong AI Gateway, Kong Mesh, Event Gateway, Insomnia, developer portals, and metering/billing.

Founded

2009

Headquarters

44 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, California, United States

Team size

700-900; Kong reported 700+ employees in May 2025 and a third-party company profile reported 756 in mid-2026

Work style

Remote

Industry

Software development

Sub-industry

API management, API gateway, service mesh, cloud infrastructure, AI governance, and developer tools

Offices

San Francisco, United States

Chicago, United States

Beijing, China

Shanghai, China

Tokyo, Japan

Milan, Italy

Bangalore, India

Pune, India

Budapest, Hungary

Paris, France

Business model

B2B enterprise SaaS

Open-core/open-source software with commercial enterprise features

Managed cloud platform

Self-hosted enterprise software and support

Usage-based metering and billing

Funding

Stage

Private, venture-backed, late-stage/growth (Series E)

Total raised

$345M

Latest round

Series E · Nov 2024

Latest amount

$175M

Series E

Nov 2024 · Tiger Global Management and Balderton Capital

$175M

Series D

Feb 2021 · Tiger Global Management

$100M

Series C

Mar 2019 · Index Ventures

$43M

Series B

Mar 2017 · Andreessen Horowitz

$18M

Series A

Nov 2013 · Index Ventures and CRV

$6.5M

Seed

Aug 2011 · New Enterprise Associates

$1.5M

Angel

Apr 2010

$101K

People & investors

Leadership

Augusto “Aghi” Marietti

Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder

Marco Palladino

Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder

Juliette Rizkallah

Chief Marketing Officer

Gunjan Aggarwal

Chief People Officer

Joe Eskenazi

Chief Revenue Officer

Bruce Felt

Chief Financial Officer

Reza Shafii

Senior Vice President, Product

Saju Pillai

Senior Vice President, Engineering

Carl Mattsson

Group Vice President and General Manager, International

Founders

Augusto Marietti

CEO & Co-founder

Investors

Work & culture

Kong describes itself as a global, remote-friendly, high-performance and inclusive workplace centered on customer focus, ownership, authenticity, speed, global collaboration, and exploration. Its stated values include Customer Champions, Owners, Unstoppable, Real, Accelerators, Global, and Explorers.

Work style

Remote

Compensation

Public evidence confirms stock options and benefits but does not establish a complete standardized compensation framework. Third-party employment data contains role-level salary estimates; treat them as directional rather than company-verified.

Benefits

Flexible time off

Stock options

Four-week paid sabbatical every five years

Dedicated unplug days

Virtual events

Home-office stipend

Remote-friendly global work culture

Product & market

Pricing

Kong Konnect offers a free 30-day trial, Plus pricing charged per gateway per month, and custom annually billed Enterprise pricing. Self-hosted Gateway Enterprise is custom-priced. Insomnia has Essentials ($0/user), Pro ($12/user/month), and Enterprise ($45/user/month) tiers. Metering and billing add usage-based commercial capabilities.

Differentiators

—Open-source core and large developer ecosystem
—Unified API, AI, service-mesh, event, and monetization platform
—Runs across cloud, hybrid, Kubernetes, VMs, and data centers
—AI Gateway governance, routing, observability, token/cost controls, and security
—Enterprise control plane with self-hosted or managed deployment choices
—OpenMeter acquisition adds usage-based metering, entitlements, and billing
—Strong API gateway adoption and broad plugin/runtime ecosystem

Technology

Kong Gateway

Kong AI Gateway

Kong Mesh

Kong Konnect

Insomnia

Kubernetes

Nginx/OpenResty

Lua

REST and GraphQL APIs

OAuth/OIDC

OpenAPI

CEL policy expressions

AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud

Apache 2.0 open-source components

Customers

Deutsche Telekom

Orange

Papa Johns

Siemens

Fortune 500 enterprises

E-commerce startups

Biotech companies

Competitors

MuleSoft

Postman

Gravitee

Tyk

Workato

WSO2

Scale & contact

Estimated revenue

Approximately $28.5M reported annual revenue in one third-party company profile, versus Kong's company-reported $100M+ ARR by late 2023; a defensible public-data range is $28.5M-$100M+ depending on whether GAAP-like revenue or ARR is measured.

support@konghq.com +1 628-243-7512

Signals & risks

Acquisition

Sep 2025

Kong acquired OpenMeter and planned to integrate usage-based metering, billing, and entitlements into Kong Konnect; OpenMeter’s founders and engineering/design team joined Kong.

Source

Latest news

Kong Opens New Offices in Paris and Milan, Driven by EMEA Customer Growth

Kong Inc. · Jul 2026

Kong announced new Paris and Milan offices, expanded London and Budapest offices, 72% year-over-year EMEA customer growth, and 71% regional headcount growth over two years.

Kong API Gateway 3.15: Accelerate API Modernization

Kong engineering/product blog · Jul 2026

The 3.15 release adds plugin cloning and streaming, CEL-based conditional policy execution, security improvements, and a Wolfi-based distroless image; Kong also highlighted AI Gateway 2.0.

Kong Acquires OpenMeter to Unlock AI and API Monetization

Kong Inc. · Sep 2025

The acquisition adds usage-based metering, billing, and entitlements to Kong Konnect and expands Kong’s positioning from connectivity governance into API and AI monetization.

Kong Secures $175 Million New Financing at $2B Valuation

Kong Inc. · Nov 2024

Kong closed a $175M Series E at a $2B valuation, led by Tiger Global and co-led by Balderton, bringing disclosed total capital raised to $345M.

Kong Inc. Releases Even Faster Cloud Native API Management Platform

Kong Inc. · Feb 2022

Significant product milestone: Kong Enterprise 2.7 launched with 25% higher throughput, lower latency, and expanded security/workflow features.

Jobs and careers at Kong

72 jobs at Kong

Enterprise Account Executive, Benelux

Remote

All Cost Center

Netherlands; Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

2d ago

Remote

Full-time