Application programming interfaces are not just a hot-button topic in tech; API monetization is clearly dominating boardroom discussions. As agentic agents enter the workforce at scale, enterprises are turning to singular control planes that can adapt to a new economy and keep return on investment measurable.

At Kong’s API Summit, the company emphasized unification and security while extending support across AI agents and event data. Announcements ranged from open-sourcing the Volcano software development kit for Model Context Protocol-powered agents to adding support for said agents across Konnect – positioning governance and revenue operations alongside core gateways. The move reflects a broader bid from Kong to anchor the emergent agent ecosystem, according to Paul Nashawaty (pictured), principal analyst at theCUBE Research.

“Kong is positioning itself to be the infrastructure backbone of the agent economy,” he said.

Nashawaty delivered a keynote analysis at Kong API Summit: The API Summit for the Agentic Era, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He discussed how Kong’s own opening announcements poise the company as a critical player as the agentic era reconsiders API monetization.

Kong bets big on API monetization and a unified control plane

Kong – which recently acquired OpenMeter to support usage-based API monetization – outlined releases aimed at long-standing blockers to agent-first architectures: trustworthy identity for non-human actors, consistent policy across APIs and events and a clear path from prototype to production. These MCP additions are particularly noteworthy as a way to standardize artificial intelligence, informing how teams build and run agents, Nashawaty noted.

“When Kong announced Konnect MCP support, it was really about enabling secure, governed and scalable agent development,” he said. “What we see in our own app dev research [is that] 54% of production applications are incorporating AI in their workflows, so [it is] not surprising that Kong went in this direction.”

That same push for unified governance and scale connects directly to revenue. Building on the OpenMeter deal, Konnect’s metering and billing now treats APIs, AI models, and event streams as products – priced, measured and iterated – so that financial controls sit alongside technical ones. The result: platforms can double down on what performs, cut what doesn’t, and charge where value is created. The business implications are clear, according to Nashawaty.

“The key takeaways here for this is it turns the APIs and AI services into direct revenue engines for the agent economy,” he said. “That’s really where this is going and where the money is gonna be driven here.”

Here’s the complete video keynote with Paul Nashawaty, part of theCUBE’s coverage of the Kong API Summit event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Kong API Summit. Neither Kong Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE