API technologies startup Kong Inc. today announced a key update to its flagship platform Kong Konnect, introducing it as a new platform that’s fit for the era of artificial intelligence.

The company explained that companies across the world are racing to adopt AI, and that’s creating a need for a unified and enterprise-grade platform for building, running and governing application programming interfaces and generative AI applications. Kong aims to provide this with Kong Konnect, which it says is a comprehensive platform for managing the entire API lifecycle.

Kong Konnect is an API platform that connects APIs and microservices natively across clouds, Kubernetes environments, data centers and more, using intelligent automation. APIs are the preferred method used by developers for exposing data and services when they build microservices-based applications in software containers that can run in any computing environment.

They provide a simple way to connect different services and applications. As an example, APIs are what makes it possible to book a flight using an app such as Skyscanner, and have that reservation appear automatically in Google Calendar.

What Kong aims to do with Kong Konnect is simplify API infrastructure management across multiple clouds and computing environments, with one-click deployment mechanisms.

With today’s update, Kong says, it’s adding new functions required by developers to prepare their APIs for the era of AI-powered applications.

To that end, the update introduces a new and centralized system of record for all APIs called the Konnect Service Catalog. It acts as a single source of truth for developers, providing greater visibility and control over shadow APIs, with faster API configuration updates and centralized management for API configurations and sensitive data, as well as tools for integrating APIs with large language models used in generative AI applications.

The company explains that many organizations struggle with a lack of visibility into shadow APIs, which is the term for undiscovered and unmanaged APIs. This lack of visibility opens the door to potential risks around vulnerabilities. With the Konnect Service Catalog, developers have an easier way to discover these APIs and block their applications from using them, eliminating those risks.

In addition, Konnect Service Catalog introduces something called Scorecards, which provide a way for users to identify services that aren’t compliant with the company’s policies, so they can more easily enforce compliance.

The other headline feature coming to Kong Konnect is AI Gateway 3.8, which introduces new semantic functionalities that can enhance AI and API infrastructures, the company said. For instance, it adds semantic caching capabilities that can accelerate AI responses by up to 20 times in some instances, while reducing the computational overhead of those applications, meaning they are not only faster but also more cost-effective.

There’s also a new Semantic Prompt Guard tool that provides better security by intelligently blocking inappropriate prompts, as specified by the developer. Finally, Semantic Routing can simplify the selection process for developers when it comes to choosing a specific AI model for their apps.

Elsewhere, the latest version of Kong Konnect includes expanded availability of the recently announced Konnect Dedicated Cloud Gateway on Amazon Web Services, which simplifies the deployment of its API management services on that cloud platform. The company also revealed a previously unannounced Dedicated Cloud Gateway for Microsoft Azure.

Kong Insomnia, a tool for designing and testing APIs, also gets updated with new features that aim to enhance developer productivity and improve the quality and security of newly-created APIs. New features include unlimited collection runs and “AI Runner,” which enables developers to leverage semantic caching capabilities to speed up AI models.

Other new capabilities include Kong Serverless Gateways, which makes it simpler to integrate Kong’s full-featured API gateway on individual servers, and Konnect Config Store, a centralized, cloud-hosted repository for managing API configurations.

Kong co-founder and Chief Executive Augusto Marietti said that every developer understands the crucial role of APIs in implementing new AI applications.

“There is no AI without APIs, and the latest version of Kong Konnect delivers the essential infrastructure for both,” he said. “We aim to give businesses the tools to manage and scale their API traffic securely, helping drive innovation faster than ever before.”

Kong unveiled its first iteration of AI Gateway support in April. Marco Palladino, co-founder and chief technology officer of Kong, appeared on SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming platform theCUBE, to discuss its launch, highlighting the desire of developers to standardize on an end-to-end platform that can give them that unified control plane to manage all of the APIs with automation:

Image: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Designer