Kong Named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for API Management for the Seventh Consecutive Year

Kong credits three consecutive years furthest right on Completeness of Vision to its evolution from APIs to AI connectivity

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Kong Inc., the AI Connectivity Company, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner® as a Leader in the 2026 Magic Quadrant™ for API Management for the seventh consecutive year. The evaluation was based on criteria that analyzed the company's overall Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Kong is positioned furthest right on Completeness of Vision, a recognition the company has now held for the past three years.

Kong sees its position in this year's Magic Quadrant as a reflection of both their vision on AI connectivity, crafted over a year ago, and the current validation of a broader shift across the industry: AI tokens are becoming a significant part of enterprise API traffic faster than organizations are applying the same governance they've long applied to APIs. Kong's own data shows enterprise AI traffic, as a share of total Kong platform traffic, has grown sevenfold in the past nine months, while less than 1% of organizations running AI through the platform have any AI-specific governance controls in place.

"We're proud to be recognized by Gartner as a Leader in API Management for the seventh year in a row. We believe this recognition reflects, first, our customers' trust and, second, the evolution of API management as enterprises move AI into real-world use cases on our connectivity layer, built to govern agents, MCP, models, and APIs in one unified control plane that nobody has ever built. The same need for governance that has made API management foundational to modern applications by platform engineering now extends across agents' workloads. Making that connectivity reliable for the most demanding organizations requires comprehensive security, compliance, cost management, resilience, and observability, across any cloud or any model. That is our ability to move AI, safely," said Augusto Marietti, CEO and co-founder, Kong Inc.

Kong continues to expand its platform to address emerging requirements across APIs and AI, including the recent launch of Kong AI Gateway 2.0, which introduces new capabilities for governed agent and MCP tool access, AI cost management, broader model and provider support, identity-aware AI policies, and authentication for AI services. The release expands Kong's ability to help enterprises securely connect, govern, and manage AI traffic in production, while giving organizations greater control over the security, cost, and operational requirements of enterprise AI.

To learn more, visit the Kong blog.

Gartner Disclaimer
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for API Management, Shameen Pillai, Nicholas Carter, and John Santoro, 28 September 2026. Gartner, Critical Capabilities for API Management, Shameen Pillai, Nicholas Carter, and John Santoro, 28 September 2026.

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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.konghq.com.

SOURCE Kong Inc.