(Bloomberg) -- Kong Inc., a startup that helps customers manage application programming interfaces, was valued at $2 billion in an investment from firms such as Tiger Global Management.
The company attracted $175 million in the round, which was co-led by Tiger and Balderton Capital, according to a statement Tuesday. Existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and CRV, also participated.
Companies are dealing with a flood of APIs — interfaces that let different pieces of software communicate — due to the spread of artificial intelligence and business applications. Kong’s cloud-based platform helps manage the potentially overwhelming number of API requests, when one application demands data or services from another.
“Every business is becoming — behind the scenes — a digital business,” co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Augusto Marietti said in an interview. The plan is to be “the fastest technology to run all of those API requests at scale.”
With the burgeoning use of APIs, “having tools to help you manage that is more necessary by the minute,” said Rana Yared, a general partner at Balderton. Kong, whose customers include Moderna Inc. and Mercedes-Benz Group AG, is well-poised to serve that market, she said.
With the new financing, Kong has raised $345 million to date. The latest valuation is an increase from the $1.4 billion that the company fetched in 2020.
Andreessen first invested in 2016, when the startup was just three weeks away from running out of cash, said Martin Casado, a general partner at the venture firm.
The business has turned things around to become a category leader in API technology, he said. Casado also noted that Salesforce Inc. acquired Mulesoft and Google bought Apigee, snapping up two other companies in this area. That created an opportunity for a new upstart to disrupt the incumbents in the industry.
Kong could “definitely be an IPO candidate” someday, he said.
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