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Kong Inc. Celebrates Innovation with 2025 Innovator Awards

On October 16, 2025, Kong Inc., a leading player in cloud API and AI technologies, unveiled the winners of the Kong Innovator Awards at the API Summit 2025 held in New York City. This prestigious event showcases creative and forward-thinking projects by Kong users that push the boundaries of API and AI applications.

The CTO and Co-Founder of Kong Inc., Marco Palladino, emphasized the significance of these awards, stating, "The Kong Innovator Awards celebrate customers who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible with APIs and AI. This year's winners exemplify what it means to innovate by using Kong to build smarter, faster, and more connected systems that are both defining and creating the future of our industry."

Award Winners Overview

Among the recipients of the 2025 Innovator Awards are:

1. Top Kong Innovator - Americas: SeatGeek

SeatGeek realized the emerging importance of large language models (LLMs) in optimizing their workflows but faced challenges in identifying valid requests amid regular HTTP traffic. To tackle this, they utilized Kong Konnect to centralize LLM request validation, allowing them to enhance security without hindering their service speed. This integration significantly reduced engineering development time and accelerated the introduction of new features to their platform.

2. Top Kong Innovator - Europe: Siemens

Siemens needed a streamlined approach to expose event-based data through APIs to eliminate the architectural debt they were accruing. By leveraging Kong's plugin system, they transformed Kong into a sophisticated control and observability layer. This innovation resulted in reduced infrastructure redundancy and improved integration times for new API consumers by about 70%.

3. Top Kong Innovator - Asia-Pacific: Seaco

Faced with challenges associated with the shipping industry’s traditional reliance on Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Seaco transformed their communication flow using Kong to process API requests in real-time. This adaptation dramatically improved the operational efficiency of request handling and significantly cut the turnaround time for repair communication.

4. Top Kong Innovator - Public Sector: HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)

HMRC addressed issues related to API proliferation, maintenance overhead, and data governance by utilizing Kong. Their efforts focus on building a streamlined self-service experience for API delivery, leading to anticipated reductions in API delivery times by 40-50% and significant cost savings.

5. Top Kong Innovator - Finance: Verifone

Verifone’s journey included numerous hurdles due to their lack of a centralized API platform. Adopting Kong enabled them to enhance security and efficiency across their payment solutions, leading to a decrease in overhead costs and an increase in productivity.

6. Top Kong Innovator - AI: HM

The decentralized framework for LLMs was a challenge for HM as it posed security and compliance risks. By pivoting to Kong AI Gateway, they established a secure and scalable infrastructure, resulting in shorter onboarding times for new AI services and improved operational cost efficiency.

7. Top Kong Innovator - Enterprise Transformation: United Airlines

United Airlines overcame the limitations of their legacy systems to implement modern solutions through Kong Konnect. This transformation allowed them to streamline API management, significantly improving the customer experience and operational reliability across their services.

8. Innovator of the Year: BMW

BMW restructured its approach to managing ConnectedDrive traffic by adopting Kong to replace its previous monolithic API gateway. This transition led to remarkable reductions in latency and improved system reliability, enhancing customer satisfaction.

Looking Ahead

As Kong Inc. continues to break new ground in API and AI technology, details regarding the API Summit 2026 and future Kong Innovator Awards will be available soon. Stay tuned for updates by visiting Kong's official site.

Kong Inc. remains committed to empowering companies to embrace an API-first mindset, driving innovation and efficiency in the evolving digital landscape. For more insights about their contributions to the industry, visit www.konghq.com or follow them on social platforms.