# Building the AI connectivity layer
## Unleash intelligence. Fast. Resilient. Secure.
## We're kind of a big deal. But don’t just take our word for it.
From [Gartner](https://konghq.com/resources/reports/gartner-magic-quadrant-full-lifecycle-api-management)Gartner to [G2](https://konghq.com/blog/news/g2-leader-top-api-management-tools)G2, Kong is recognized as a leader by builders and businesses.
## The Legend of Kong
A true story of grit, tuna noodles, and holy water
## Once upon a time in Italy
**The story of Kong begins in Milan, way back in 2009. (Great. Now we feel old.) **
Schoolmates Augusto “Aghi” Marietti and Marco Palladino had a wild idea to start a business. They rented a garage, snagged IKEA furniture, put a rug in (to tie the room together), and started making a tool for building applications without code.
But there wasn’t a big venture capital scene in Milan. That was a problem. Because, as companies do, Mashape needed money. If they couldn’t get funds in the home of da Vinci and Galileo, they’d try their chances in the land of Jobs and Zuck.
We grew up in Italy. It’s not the kind of place where you can build the next big thing. You can do startups, obviously, but just into the fashion industry :)
## Crunch time
Marco and Aghi got accepted into a TechCrunch pitch competition and were invited to crash at Travis Kalanick's JamPad. They hopped on a plane with cash to last a week. The wrinkle? They needed three months.
They were hungry. Figuratively and literally. They shared a bed and survived on tuna with pasta and free pizza at meetups. (Imagine how hungry an Italian has to be to eat California pizza.) They commuted on kids' bikes with busted brakes, dragging their sneakers to stop on hair-raising rides through the hills.
Call it grit or determination. But one thing was sure: Marco and Aghi weren’t going home. And not just because they couldn’t afford plane tickets.
## Just add (holy) water
They went to any networking event they could get invited to. They crashed ones they weren’t invited to. And then it happened. They secured $101,000 in their first angel round.
Maybe investors saw the product's promise. Or maybe they just hoped Aghi and Marco would leave them alone. But the guys had enough cash to start growing the business.
But as Mashape evolved and grew to become the world's biggest API marketplace, the money was running out.
They needed a miracle. To help with just that, Marco sprinkled a sleeping Aghi with holy water courtesy of his aunt in Rome. It couldn’t hurt. (As long as you watch the eyes.) Lo and behold, Aghi spent the next day in meetings and scored $1.5 million in seed funding.
We didn't have any money or funding. We actually lived with just a promissory note of $3.5k every three months. In San Francisco.
## From monolith to microservices
As the API marketplace grew, it became a monolith. Nobody could work on it. (Stop us if you’ve heard this one.) It had to be decoupled into microservices.
So Marco and Aghi built an API gateway to power the new architecture. Along the way, they realized customers were going through similar battles with their own monoliths. Problem, meet solution!
## Going all in on Kong
In 2017, they open-sourced the API gateway and named it Kong. (Mash-*ape*. Kong. Get it?)
Soon, the Kong business was booming. Marco and Aghi shifted their full attention to it, selling Mashape and further investing in Kong.
Over the next two years, Aghi and Marco grew the team to over 100.
## Gateway to the future
[_Kong Gateway_](https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway)_Kong Gateway_ became the world's most adopted API gateway. But now APIs weren't just talking to the outside world. They were talking to each other. Services whispering inside the cluster, in ways a gateway wasn't designed to handle.
So Kong acquired Kuma, launching the first universal service mesh. Then came the acquisition of API testing tool [_Insomnia_](https://konghq.com/products/kong-insomnia)_Insomnia_, bringing Kong into the development workflow.
In 2020, Kong donated Kuma to the CNCF and debuted enterprise service mesh [_Kong Mesh_](https://konghq.com/products/kong-mesh)_Kong Mesh_.
## An ape becomes a unicorn
[_Kong Konnect_](https://konghq.com/products/kong-konnect)_Kong Konnect_ debuted and tied it all together: a managed platform for the entire API lifecycle, across any cloud, any environment.
Investors noticed. A $100 million Series D at a $1.4 billion valuation followed. Did someone say unicorn?
## Surpassing $100M ARR
By late 2023, Kong grew to over 500 employees and celebrated surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
Next up, Kong launched [_Kong AI Gateway_](https://konghq.com/products/kong-ai-gateway)_Kong AI Gateway_ and announced $175 million in Series E financing at a $2 billion valuation.
In 2025, Kong acquired [_OpenMeter_](https://konghq.com/blog/news/kong-acquires-openmeter)_OpenMeter_, which enables usage-based pricing, entitlements, and invoicing for APIs, events, and AI workloads in Konnect.
## No AI without APIs
These days, Aghi and Marco aren't quite as keen on tuna pasta. But the hunger is still there.
The world is shifting from connecting cloud services to connecting intelligence. APIs aren't just how software talks. They're how AI thinks, acts, and moves. Every agent, model, and prompt produces traffic. Someone has to manage it. That "someone" is Kong.
The [_age of AI connectivity_](https://konghq.com/blog/news/the-age-of-ai-connectivity)_age of AI connectivity_ demands speed, security, and reliability: the things Kong was built on. Kong Konnect is the unified API and AI platform.
The garage in Milan feels like a long time ago. But the challenge — how do you connect everything, reliably and fast, without things falling apart — is the same.
## Global footprint
From Milan to Miami, we really get around.
## Our Investors
Investing in AI. Investing in Kong.
## The heads enabling the headless revolution
Meet our leadership team.
## LEADERSHIP
Augusto Marietti
-Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder
Marco Palladino
-Chief Technology Officer & 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
Ken Kim
-Senior Vice President, Business Development
## BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Augusto Marietti
-Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder, Kong
Marco Palladino
-Chief Technology Officer & Co-founder, Kong
Devdutt Yellurkar
-CRV
Mike Volpi
-Index Ventures
Martin Casado
-Andreessen Horowitz
Rana Yared
-Balderton