Kong Inc. Is Named to the 2022 Forbes Cloud 100 for the Second Consecutive Year

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Kong Inc., the cloud native API company, has been named for the second consecutive year to the Forbes 2022 Cloud 100, the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, published by Forbes in partnership with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures.

“On behalf of all Kongers, we are both humbled and proud to be a part of the Forbes Cloud 100 list for the second year in a row,” said Augusto Marietti, CEO and co-founder of Kong Inc. “We continue to listen to our customers and user community, who want faster, more secure and more efficient API connectivity in today’s increasingly digital world. This recognition is a testament to our team’s tireless hard work and dedication to building a reliable cloud native API platform that organizations and developer teams can trust in their cloud journey.”

Kong provides the fastest end-to-end API lifecycle management platform and the most adopted API gateway to empower businesses to build, design, run and govern API services. Built on battle-tested open source technology and enhanced with enterprise-grade features and support, Kong’s platform unleashes developer productivity, helping organizations grow faster, scale reliably and build more securely.

For the seventh straight year, the Cloud 100 reviews submissions from hundreds of cloud startups and private companies each year. The Cloud 100 evaluation process involved ranking companies across four factors: market leadership (35%), estimated valuation (30%), operating metrics (20%), and people & culture (15%). For market leadership, the Cloud 100 enlists the help of a judging panel of public cloud company CEOs who assist in evaluating and ranking their private company peers.

“The companies of the Cloud 100 list represent the best and brightest private companies in this fast-growing sector,” said Alex Konrad, senior editor at Forbes. “Every year, it gets more difficult to make this list — meaning even more elite company for those who do. Congratulations to each of the 2022 Cloud 100 honorees.”

“The public markets may be in turmoil, but the private valuations of the Cloud 100 continue to rise. All of the 2022 Cloud 100 honorees, again, have reached the $1 billion valuation milestone, and the average Cloud 100 valuation has skyrocketed to $7.4 billion,” said Mary D’Onofrio, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Despite the market correction in 2022, our confidence in the cloud economy continues to grow—today over 70% of the 2022 Cloud 100 Honorees have reached or exceeded $100 million in annual recurring revenue making them cloud Centaurs. An additional 10% of the list is expected to hit this milestone by the end of the year, furthering our conviction that this year’s honorees truly represent the best cloud companies globally.”

“Great companies are born out of all environments, and it’s exciting to see the continued momentum in the cloud sector,” said Alex Kayyal, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures. ”The companies on this list have gone through a rigorous selection process, and join an esteemed alumni list of Cloud 100 companies. As the need for digital transformation continues to drive innovation and efficiencies across industries, we can look to these companies as the absolute best in cloud computing.“

The Forbes 2022 Cloud 100 and 20 Rising Stars lists are published online at www.forbes.com/cloud100. Highlights of the list appear in the August/September 2022 issue of Forbes magazine.

This year, the CEOs of The Cloud 100 and the 20 Rising Stars companies will be honored with a digital content launch, as well as at the exclusive Cloud 100 Celebration hosted by Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, and Forbes. A special thank you to our event sponsors Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bank of America, Cooley, Fuel a McKinsey Company, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq, and Silicon Valley Bank.

About Kong Inc.

Kong is the cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world. Loved by developers and trusted with enterprises’ most critical traffic volumes, Kong helps startups and Fortune 500 companies build with confidence – allowing them to bring solutions to market faster with API and service connectivity that scales easily and securely. Leaders like Nasdaq, PayPal, GE, Samsung, Expedia, GlaxoSmithKline, Rite Aid, Moderna, Wayfair and Verifone trust Kong to help them modernize their tech stacks, adopt new technologies and meet customer demand quickly through APIs. For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter.

Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 135 IPOs and 200 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer’s global portfolio includes Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr and Toast and has $19 billion of regulatory assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Boston, Beijing and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer’s storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti-Portfolio).

About Forbes

Forbes champions success by celebrating those who have made it, and those who aspire to make it. Forbes convenes and curates the most influential leaders and entrepreneurs who are driving change, transforming business and making a significant impact on the world. The Forbes brand today reaches more than 150 million people worldwide through its trusted journalism, signature LIVE and Forbes Virtual events, custom marketing programs and 47 licensed local editions in 80 countries. Forbes Media’s brand extensions include real estate, education and financial services license agreements.

Salesforce Ventures

Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works. Since 2009, we’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world’s most tenacious enterprise software companies from seed to IPO, including Airtable, Databricks, DocuSign, Guild Education, Hopin, monday.com, nCino, Snowflake, Snyk, Stripe, Tanium, and Zoom. Salesforce Ventures leverages our decades of expertise in the cloud and our long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give our portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 25 countries with offices all over the world including in San Francisco, Irvine, New York, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. Follow @SalesforceVC and learn more at http://www.salesforceventures.com.

Contacts

Kong Media Contact
Pauline Louie

press@konghq.com

Highwire PR

kong@highwirepr.com