PolyAI picks Kong to scale enterprise API platform
Wed, 6th May 2026 (Yesterday)
PolyAI has selected Kong to unify and scale its API infrastructure, supporting its enterprise conversational AI platform for developers.
The arrangement centres on Kong Konnect, which PolyAI is using to standardise API management, developer onboarding, documentation, analytics and governance across the business. The setup is intended to give engineering teams more control over their services while improving visibility across the wider platform.
More than 200 enterprise customers use PolyAI's Agent Studio, according to the companies. They deploy AI agents to manage customer conversations across multiple languages, channels and markets.
The move comes as businesses building AI products face rising pressure to manage larger volumes of traffic and give external developers easier access to their systems. API platforms have become a key layer in that process, governing how software services connect, how usage is monitored and how access is controlled.
The new setup will also support self-service onboarding and API key generation for developers using PolyAI's services. PolyAI expects deeper CI/CD integration and automation to simplify API delivery and routine operations.
Revenue model
Another part of the project is commercial. Kong Konnect will allow PolyAI to track API usage, apply tiered pricing models and support API monetisation as it expands its developer-facing products.
That is significant for AI software groups seeking to turn internal tools into products that partners and customers can buy and integrate into their own systems. Usage-based charging and clearer visibility over traffic have become standard requirements as companies move from pilot deployments to broader commercial rollouts.
"As PolyAI scales to meet massive demand for enterprise-grade agentic AI, Kong gives us the infrastructure to leapfrog traditional development," said Shawn Wen, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of PolyAI. "This partnership helps us ship our agentic workflows and put the power of enterprise conversational AI directly into the hands of developers worldwide."
Kong says its platform is designed to bring API and AI management into one system rather than relying on fragmented architecture. That approach can help organisations govern APIs, large language model connections, events and microservices from a single control plane.
Scale pressure
The agreement also reflects growing demand for infrastructure that can cope with much higher transaction volumes as AI services are deployed at scale. Conversational AI suppliers increasingly need systems that can manage both standard API calls and AI-related requests while maintaining operational oversight.
PolyAI's customer base includes large enterprises such as Marriott, Caesars Entertainment, PG&E and UniCredit. The company says some of its largest deployments already perform work equivalent to that of more than 1,000 full-time employees, underscoring the operational scale behind customer service automation.
For Kong, the partnership adds another AI-focused customer to its platform business at a time when software vendors are positioning API management as core infrastructure for AI adoption. Its system can handle more than a trillion API calls and AI requests each day, according to the company.
"APIs are foundational to how modern enterprises operate and PolyAI needed to not only scale their APIs, but effectively manage them. With Kong, they have moved from a more fragmented infrastructure to a unified platform capable of handling over a trillion API calls and AI requests each day with the performance and governance a scaling business requires," said Marco Palladino, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Kong. "Together, we share a vision for the next phase of innovation-where agentic workflows in conversational AI aren't experimental, but operational, secure, and deeply connected to the systems that power the business."