Round Led by Tiger Global, Co-Led by New Investor Balderton, with Additional New Investor Participation from Teachers’ Venture Growth
Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, today announced it has closed a $175 million in up-round Series E financing, with a mix of primary and secondary transactions at a $2 billion valuation. The round was led by Tiger Global and co-led by new investor Balderton, with additional new participation from Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and 137 Ventures among others and continued support from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, CRV, Sapphire Ventures, and Notable Capital. This brings Kong’s total capital raised to $345 million.
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“This funding will fuel our efforts to help any organization to leverage our unified API platform to manage, secure, and observe both internal and external APIs like never before,” said Augusto Marietti, CEO and co-founder of Kong Inc. “As we continue to see a worldwide surge in demand for API calls – propelled most recently by the rise of LLMs – Kong is uniquely positioned to help our customers consolidate disparate API systems to enable “the software assembly line” of the AI era.”
Kong will use the new funds to accelerate its global GTM expansion, enhance product innovation with AI-infused capabilities across AI Gateway, Konnect, Insomnia and all our leading API runtimes such as Kong Gateway and Kong Mesh, while investing in the growth of its customer experience teams.
Market Leadership
“Kong’s strategic expansion across Europe, Asia and emerging markets addresses the growing global demand for robust API solutions. Their commitment to delivering a secure, scalable and resilient API infrastructure platform is essential in today’s digital economy,” said Rana Yared, General Partner at Balderton. “The Kong team enables businesses worldwide to innovate and adopt AI at scale.”
In addition, Rana Yared will join Kong as a board observer.
“Kong has shown remarkable growth and vision, particularly with their focus on empowering developers and businesses to harness the power of AI through secure API adoption,” said Andrea Roda, Principal at Balderton. “Their commitment to innovation and customer success is unmatched, and we believe they are setting the standard for the future of critical digital infrastructure.”
Vision for API-First Companies in an AI-Driven World
Kong’s unified API platform enables organizations to build AI applications faster while ensuring centralized API security, governance and visibility across all services. As more companies pivot to becoming API-first, Kong provides the critical infrastructure needed to enable secure and scalable AI solutions.
“Kong helps companies build and innovate faster by providing a platform that governs, manages and discovers all APIs and AI models within an organization,” added Marco Palladino, CTO and co-founder, Kong Inc. “We’re helping customers across industries — from startups to Fortune 500® enterprises — accelerate their time to market, scale AI capabilities and reduce operational risks. This is achieved through the most secure and comprehensive API management, which effectively serves as an operating system to oversee all APIs and AI models in any enterprise. Given that API and AI connectivity are at the core of every digital product, Kong’s platform is a strategic core component in every modern architecture.”
With this funding, Kong is poised to continue revolutionizing API management and AI integration for organizations globally, empowering businesses to stay ahead in an increasingly digital and AI-driven world.
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