Augusto Marietti, CEO and co-founder of Kong, explains how traditional API calls and modern AI model token transfers are converging into unified connectivity platforms.
“The way we know about API infrastructure, it will evolve, it won't change, but API traffic and AI traffic, they are converging. So the classic API calls, yes, but also when you move tokens is an API call. And Intelligent, let's say Intelligent will be sold through tokens. Every earning release is about tokens, but behind any tokens, there are calls that payloads move tokens. So they're kind of converging and what we are calling our building is a unified API and AI connectivity platform that helps you navigate this transition as you're managing classic API traffic, as you're managing agent traffic, as you manage MCP traffic, as you manage LLM traffic. I think it will all converge into a unified like broker. And that's how I think intelligence will move and it's an evolutionary steps in like two, three years.”
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More from Augusto Marietti
PredictionNot checkable as stated
AI agents will consume the internet via APIs, rendering UIs secondary
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Augusto MariettiOct 21, 2025▶ 27:56How Kong Was Born: APIs, Hustle, and the Future of AI Infrastructure
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Enterprises will abstract LLM management into a unified AI gateway layer
“The same thing I think is going to happen in LLMs. At first, you have one enterprise use one big LLMs. Now they're going to use five, 1000, small LLM, medium, large, whatever. Once you get to, you don't do tokens re-limiting, token authentication in each LLM u…”
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Insight
Mariotti: Open-source software marketing gains are offset by enterprise sales friction
“So 50% of our competition is ourself. So in open source, what you gain in marketing, you lose it in sales.”
Augusto MariettiJan 2, 2019▶ 27:53a16z Podcast | The API Economy -- The Why, What, and How
AssertionContradicted
Kong invented control and data plane separation in API management
“We kind of invented the control plane, data plane separation at the API management, API control plane level. Nobody was doing it before.”
Augusto MariettiOct 21, 2025▶ 25:45How Kong Was Born: APIs, Hustle, and the Future of AI Infrastructure
Disclosure
Augusto Marietti never considered quitting Kong because returning to Italy meant failure
“Never. The reason is, I could Never visualize myself going back to the airport in Italy and my dad picking him up and say, how's it going? And it's just like would fail with my tails and my legs. Like I could never, I would have died here without food. Like I …”
Augusto MariettiOct 21, 2025▶ 35:48How Kong Was Born: APIs, Hustle, and the Future of AI Infrastructure
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Mariotti: Fortune 500 APIs Fail When Treated as Brand Ego Projects
“You have giant Fortune 500 that thought that way, and just because they're the ego of the brand, but they never went anywhere, nobody used their APIs. Just because they think like an afterthought or a satellite thing, rather than the future.”
Augusto MariettiJan 2, 2019▶ 29:48a16z Podcast | The API Economy -- The Why, What, and How
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