Kong Acquires OpenMeter to Unlock AI and API Monetization for the Agentic Era

The acquisition paves the way for usage-based billing and metering in Kong Konnect, the unified API platform, enabling organizations to productize and monetize APIs, AI tokens, and data streams

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API and AI technologies, today announced the acquisition of OpenMeter, a leading open-source and SaaS platform for usage-based metering and billing. The acquisition will bring usage-based monetization capabilities to Kong Konnect, the unified API platform. This will enable organizations to productize and bill for their APIs, AI, and data streams, seamlessly turning digital assets into new sources of revenue.

In the AI era, billing becomes a metering problem. Agents will exchange labor via APIs. Large Language Models (LLM) – if not chats – are already sold via APIs. This requires a new kind of platform that brings together API infrastructure and monetization all in one. A unified approach to enforcement, security, and monetization. As AI adoption accelerates, digital connections are no longer deterministic or limited to the pace of human activity. Instead, they are continuous, machine-driven, and orders of magnitude larger. AI agents can trigger thousands of API and data calls per second, increasing both the scale and variability of usage. To capture that value without undercharging or overcharging, organizations need scalable metering and billing built for precision and AI speed.

"As businesses scale and AI adoption grows, organizations need simple, turnkey solutions to meter and monetize digital consumption in real time. With OpenMeter joining Kong, we're enabling customers to turn their APIs, data, and AI capabilities into new revenue streams. Thus making monetization native, scalable, and ready for the agentic AI era," said Augusto Marietti, CEO and Co-Founder of Kong Inc.

With this acquisition, OpenMeter's core product will be integrated into Kong Konnect, giving organizations a unified way to measure, bill, and manage usage across all digital assets, including APIs, LLMs, and event streams consumed by AI agents. Konnect also brings unique metadata from the API runtimes to enable seamless enforcement and metering. By combining usage data, billing infrastructure, and cloud cost observability, product managers and developers will gain turnkey tools for consumption-based pricing, faster product launches, and flexible monetization strategies that can provide higher ROI from digital services.

The OpenMeter Cloud platform will continue operating as usual for all of its current and new customers. Integration of OpenMeter into Kong Konnect is expected to be completed early 2026, with customer migration to the new platform scheduled for completion mid-2026. The transition will provide enhanced capabilities, multi-region deployment, and improved compliance and security. OpenMeter will remain an open-source project under Kong, with ongoing development contributing to the future capabilities of the platform.

In addition, OpenMeter's engineering and design team will be joining Kong, along with co-founders Peter Marton and Andras Toth, and we'll immediately increase investments and team size. Kong Konnect is a unified API platform designed to support every aspect of modern API connectivity. Enterprises can build, run, discover, and govern APIs, LLMs/MCPs, event streams, and service meshes—all from a single, globally distributed control plane. With support for multiple runtimes and protocols, Konnect empowers platform and security teams to implement best practices at scale while enabling organizations to be ready for the Agentic AI era.

About Kong Inc.
Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API and AI technologies, is on a mission to empower companies to become "API-first" to advance and enable the AI era. They help organizations worldwide — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — unleash developer productivity, build securely, and accelerate time to market. For more information about Kong, please visit www.konghq.com or follow us on X @thekonginc.

SOURCE Kong Inc.