Kong Raises $100 Million to Accelerate Cloud Connectivity
8.2.2021 18:30:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Kong Inc., the cloud connectivity company, today announced it has closed $100 million in Series D funding, led by Tiger Global Management with participation from existing investors Index Ventures, CRV, GGV Capital and Andreessen Horowitz as well as new investor Goldman Sachs. This latest round brings Kong’s total funding to $171 million, tripling its valuation to $1.4 billion since the Series C round. Kong will use the capital to scale its go-to-market operations, grow world-class Engineering and Customer Experience teams, and accelerate cloud connectivity with its new SaaS-based Kong Konnect service connectivity platform.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210208005517/en/
Kong Co-Founders Augusto Marietti and Marco Palladino (Photo: Business Wire)
“The shift to digital and cloud has been revolutionary across all fronts, quickly propelling developer-led organizations and API-first companies to the forefront,” said John Curtius, partner at Tiger Global Management. “With impressive momentum, happy customers and strong market share, Kong is primed to help organizations meet the growing demands of this new digital reality and succeed in today’s cloud native world. We have been following the company closely for the past couple of years, and Kong is really starting to pull away from the rest of the pack.”
The fundraise follows a record year for Kong, marked by a significant increase in adoption of its flagship open source software – Kong Gateway – now exceeding 220 million total downloads and 1.5 million monthly active instances. The company added key Global 2000 companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Papa John’s and Siemens to its growing enterprise customer base, as well as tripled its small business and mid-market enterprise customers. In addition, Kong was recognized as an Inc. 5000 company and a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 company with 1,908% revenue growth over a three-year period.
“In 2020, we saw an explosion of data in motion and services as companies fast-tracked the release of new digital experiences in response to the pandemic,” said Augusto Marietti, CEO and co-founder of Kong Inc. “Software is truly becoming like a giant nervous system through millions of APIs and services. Kong is on a mission to become the spinal cord and backbone by building the cloud connectivity fabric of the future.”
IDC predicts that worldwide data will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025, with 49% of the data residing in the cloud. According to Gartner, cloud native platforms will serve as the foundation for more than three-quarters of new digital workloads by 2024. Kong Konnect, a full-stack service connectivity platform designed for cloud native applications and delivered as a service, enables developers, architects and operators to seamlessly deliver connectivity at the edge, within their applications and between applications. It provides universal service connectivity and management that is reliable, observable and secure across any infrastructure.
“Modern infrastructure is driven by open source technologies, and Kong’s open source DNA has played a pivotal role in driving its adoption both in the community and in enterprise organizations,” said Marco Palladino, CTO and co-founder of Kong Inc. “Kong Konnect takes cloud connectivity to the next level by providing a full-stack service connectivity platform that goes from API gateways to services meshes via open technologies like Kong Gateway, CNCF’s Kuma and Insomnia – running across every cloud and every platform, including on Kubernetes and VMs. Teams around the world can now abstract away their enterprise L4-L7 connectivity in one click to build secure, resilient and distributed applications like never before.”
Additional Resources
About Kong Inc.
Kong creates software and managed services that connect APIs and microservices natively across and within clouds, Kubernetes, data centers and more using intelligent automation. Built on an open source core, Kong’s service connectivity platform enables digital innovation by allowing organizations to reliably and securely manage the full lifecycle of APIs and services for modern architectures, including microservices, serverless and service mesh. By providing developer teams with unprecedented architectural freedom, Kong accelerates innovation cycles, increases productivity, and seamlessly bridges legacy and modern systems and applications. For more information about Kong, please visit https://konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210208005517/en/
Contact information
Pauline Louie, Kong, (628) 243-7512, press@konghq.com
Jill Reed, Sift Communications for Kong, kong@siftpr.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
New AI Research from GFT Technologies: 84% of CIOs Have Canceled an AI Project Over Legacy System Limits29.9.2026 15:07:00 EEST | Press release
A new AI study from GFT Technologies, an AI-centric global digital transformation company, finds that legacy infrastructure is one of the biggest obstacles to enterprise AI success, with the vast majority of technology leaders reporting it has forced them to abandon AI initiatives. The GFT survey, conducted by Wakefield Research among 945 CIOs and CTOs across 19 countries at companies with at least $500M in annual revenue (fielded August 11-31, 2026), reveals that AI's promise and its risks are accelerating in tandem. Key themes include legacy infrastructure undermining AI initiatives, skepticism over AI's return on investment, geopolitical and regulatory uncertainty reshaping strategy, distrust of how companies explain workforce decisions, and rising personal risk for technology leaders. “AI adoption is moving quickly, but our research shows that enterprises are increasingly recognizing the importance of the foundation underneath it. For many organizations, legacy infrastructure is be
Kyowa Kirin and Knight Therapeutics Enter Into Exclusive Distribution Agreement for POTELIGEO ® (mogamulizumab) for Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma (CTCL) Patients Across Latin America29.9.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Kyowa Kirin International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd. (TSE:4151, Kyowa Kirin), today announced the signing of an exclusive distribution agreement with Knight Therapeutics (“Knight”) (TSX: GUD) for the distribution of mogamulizumab in select countries in Latin America. Under the terms of the agreement, Knight will be responsible for seeking the necessary regulatory approvals and commercialising mogamulizumab for mycosis fungoides (MF) and Sézary syndrome (SS), two subtypes of CTCL, a rare non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. Knight will hold exclusive distribution rights for the medicine in these markets. Kyowa Kirin and Knight’s collaboration aims to support CTCL patients and improve their access to innovative therapies in Latin America. Céline Rhême, Cluster General Manager, Emerging Growth Markets, Kyowa Kirin, commented: “CTCL is more common in this region than many realise, and further work is needed to identify unmet needs and
Heaviside Industries Awarded $99M IDIQ Contract to Provide MOTH Spectrum Analyzers to U.S. Army29.9.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Heaviside Industries, a builder of multi-domain precision munitions platforms, announced it has been awarded a $99 million firm-fixed-price, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract by the U.S. Army to deliver its MOTH radio frequency (RF) spectrum analyzers in support of the Army’s electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO) priorities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260929455358/en/ The five-year contract was awarded by U.S. Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland and includes system procurement, fielding, upgrades, and sustainment. As unmanned systems proliferate and adversaries increasingly exploit the electromagnetic spectrum, the Army requires EMSO capabilities that are scalable, adaptable, and rapidly fieldable to maintain an advantage in the spectrum. Heaviside’s MOTH meets this need with real-time, passive RF detection in a low size, weight, power, and cost system
Royal Yacht International Represents Buyer in Landmark 132M Lürssen as Founder Predicts: “The Billion-dollar Yacht Is Coming”29.9.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Royal Yacht International has announced PROJECT M, a fully custom 132-metre Lürssensuperyacht exceeding 6,000 GT. But for Royal Yacht International Founder and CEO Tommaso Chiabra, the project is less about size than what it represents. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260928365204/en/ Project M At the very top of the luxury market, the world’s most exceptional yachts are becoming increasingly difficult to reproduce. Only a small number of shipyards can execute projects of this scale. Construction takes years. Specialist capacity is finite. Build slots are scarce. And replacement cost can change dramatically between contract signing and delivery. “People look at purchase price. Sophisticated owners look at replacement value. What would somebody have to spend, and how long would they have to wait, to recreate your yacht when it is delivered?” For RYI, this is changing the role of the yacht broker. HUNDREDS OF MI
Create Apps Championship Winners Highlight Dubai’s Strength as a Base for Scaling Digital Businesses29.9.2026 14:49:00 EEST | Press release
Winners of past editions of Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy’s Create Apps Championship have highlighted how Dubai is helping entrepreneurs transform promising ideas into scalable digital ventures, with the championship playing a key role in supporting their growth. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260929068961/en/ During Create Apps Championship 2025 (Photo: AETOSWire) Launched in 2023 as part of the ‘Create Apps in Dubai’ initiative, the championship supports participants through specialised training, mentorship, connections with investors and partners, and funding to develop and launch winning apps. Mariam Mohammed Almarri, Co-Founder of Boom, said: “A major milestone in our journey was participating in the Create Apps Championship, where Boom was recognised as ‘Dubai’s App of the Year 2025’ and ‘Most Impactful App’. This recognition enabled us to build Boom and transport it from an idea into a real product.
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom