Kong Names Joe Eskenazi Chief Revenue Officer

Kong Expands Executive Bench, Tapping Proven Sales Leader to Further Scale Its Global Revenue Engine and Accelerate World-Class GTM

SAN FRANCISCO, June 18, 2024 — Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, today welcomed Joe Eskenazi as Chief Revenue Officer. Eskenazi will oversee Kong’s global sales organization, including Direct Sales, Sales Engineering, Sales and Business Development Representatives, Channels, Revenue Operations, and Enablement. He will drive strategies to help scale Kong’s revenue engine and ensure organizational alignment for growth.

Eskenazi brings over 20 years of business development and sales leadership experience. At Sprinklr, he helped lead revenue growth from the early stages to over $700 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) through its IPO in June 2021. His leadership will strengthen Kong’s partnerships across Customer Success, Business Development and Marketing teams to enhance the company’s GTM strategies and help drive global revenue expansion.

Having topped $100 million ARR in 2023, Kong currently serves approximately 700 commercial customers, including GlaxoSmithKline, Moderna, Wayfair, PayPal, and The New York Stock Exchange. Kong’s flagship open source API gateway handles more than 400 billion API calls a day and has been downloaded over 340 million times by thousands of organizations, while Kong’s recently introduced AI Gateway addresses the surging demand for AI adoption and governance.

"Having Joe Eskenazi join Kong as our Chief Revenue Officer is a significant win for us, and we’re excited about the journey ahead. Joe’s expertise and alignment with our sales framework, his proven track record in driving revenue growth and his commitment to investing in people make him the perfect fit," said Augusto Marietti, CEO and Co-Founder of Kong Inc. "With Joe on board, we’re confident in accelerating our global growth in key markets and achieving the ambitious targets we’ve set for our business."

"Kong is at the forefront of API innovation, enabling companies to become API-first and deliver fast, reliable and secure digital experiences. I’m thrilled to join the team and help accelerate our growth," said Joe Eskenazi, Chief Revenue Officer of Kong Inc. "With Kong’s unified cloud API platform, we empower developers to boost productivity through seamless API management, service mesh and ingress controller capabilities. It’s an exciting time to be at Kong, and I look forward to driving the organization and our revenue to new heights."

Before joining Kong, Eskenazi held leadership roles at Sprinklr, Tenfold, Fuze, Aggregate Knowledge (Neustar), Adchemy (Walmart Labs), IBM, and RCM Technologies. He has extensive experience in SaaS and on-premises enterprise technology solutions, managing multi-million dollar deals from mid-market to Fortune 100 companies. Joe holds an MBA from the USC Marshall School of Business and a BA in Communications with a minor in Sports Management from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

About Kong

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, is on a mission to enable companies around the world to become “API-first.” Kong helps organizations globally — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely, and accelerate time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit www.konghq.com or follow us on X @thekonginc.

Press Contact:

Jim Rivas

press@konghq.com