The REST API wave and its gateways (2007-2018)
As companies moved data online, REST APIs became the standard way applications talked to each other. A wave of gateway and integration firms — Kong, Apigee, MuleSoft — built the pipes, security, and policy layers around those APIs. Consolidation followed: Google bought Apigee for $625 million in 2016, Salesforce bought MuleSoft for $6.5 billion in 2018.
Enterprise software standardized on governed REST APIs with authentication, rate limiting, and analytics.
Gateway and integration vendors became core infrastructure of the digital economy, worth billions in acquisitions.
Kong is replaying the playbook for AI: MCP servers as the new endpoints, and gateways that secure and meter agent traffic.
