# Kong Introduces AI Cost Management to Help Enterprises Attribute and Control AI Spend
*New Kong AI Gateway capabilities help enterprises attribute AI costs to the teams, applications and agents driving consumption, and manage spend across models and providers*
**SAN FRANCISCO, November 4, 2026 — **[_Kong Inc._](http://kong.ai)_Kong Inc._, the AI Connectivity Company,** **today announced the general availability of new [_AI cost management capabilities_](https://konghq.com/products/ai-cost-management)_AI cost management capabilities_ for Kong AI Gateway, helping enterprises move beyond basic token and provider cost visibility to better manage AI spending. The capabilities connect AI consumption to the teams, applications and agents driving it, giving organizations the business context they need to attribute costs, plan budgets and control spending across models and providers.
“Enterprises need more than visibility into how much AI they’re consuming. They need to understand where that spend originates, how it maps to business activity, and how to manage it over time,” said Reza Shafii, Senior Vice President, Product at Kong. “By connecting AI usage to the teams, applications and agents driving it, Kong helps organizations move from tracking AI costs to actively managing them.”
As AI agents take on more work, AI consumption is becoming harder to predict and manage across models and providers, each with different pricing structures. Gartner [_predicts_](https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/8109797)_predicts_ that, by 2028, businesses without AI token metering will miss out on their AI-related growth targets by 70%, making it crucial for organizations to get a handle on it now.
While organizations can track token usage and provider costs, they often struggle to connect that spend to the teams, applications and agents driving it. Without that attribution, enterprises lack the business context to budget, control and optimize AI spending.
Kong closes this attribution gap by connecting AI usage and associated costs to the business activity driving consumption. Because Kong AI Gateway sits between AI consumers and model providers, it can observe supported usage, model and provider information, and request context.
The expanded cost management capabilities build on this foundation to help organizations:
- - **Price** **AI usage** based on each model and provider’s pricing structure, including input and output tokens, cached tokens, and service tiers.
- - **Attribute** **costs** to the people, agents, teams, applications, programs, products and cost centers driving consumption.
- - **Plan AI spend **with budgets aligned to organizational priorities and business needs.
- - **Control** **spend **by forecasting consumption, detecting anomalies and enforcing policies to manage costs.
- - **Optimize AI usage** with techniques such as semantic caching, prompt compression and intelligent model routing.
The result is a common economic layer across AI infrastructure that allows organizations to manage AI spend independently of the individual models and providers underneath it.
AI Cost Management is now generally available in Kong AI Gateway. You can learn more [_here_](https://konghq.com/products/ai-cost-management)_here_.
**About Kong Inc.**
Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, is building the connectivity layer of AI. Trusted by the Fortune 500® and AI-native startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI traffic — on any model, any cloud. For more information, visit www.Kong.AI.