Kong Adds MCP Support to Make Agentic Development Easier, More Secure, and More Cost-Effective
Kong Inc. announced new Model Context Protocol (MCP) capabilities across its platform at API Summit 2025. The updates span the newest AI Gateway, an MCP-enabled Konnect Developer Portal, and Volcano - an open-source SDK for building agents. The goal: give platform and app teams a unified, secure path to build, run, and govern MCP-based tools and applications at scale.
"Agentic AI offers tremendous opportunities for enterprises, but realizing that potential requires the right infrastructure. While MCP has emerged as the backbone for agentic workflows, there are real challenges around security, reliability, and performance," said Marco Palladino, CTO and Co-Founder, Kong Inc.
What's new in Kong AI Gateway for MCP
- Consistent MCP server autogeneration and protection: Automatically generate secured MCP servers from Kong-managed APIs to speed up internal agent development and reduce manual setup across teams.
- Centralized MCP authentication: Apply policy-driven access with a dedicated MCP OAuth 2.1 plugin. Validate tokens and standardize security controls across every MCP server from one place.
- Deeper observability and governance: Capture data on MCP tools, workflows, and prompts, then analyze it in Konnect dashboards for cost control, performance monitoring, and policy enforcement - alongside existing LLM analytics.
- MCP-enabled access through Konnect Developer Portal: Turn portals into MCP servers so AI coding assistants can discover and use approved APIs with consistent governance.
- AI Integration Composer: Discover, compose, and map intelligent API endpoints as MCP tools - a step toward AI-based integration across your services.
- AI Integration Runner: Generate and run the code required for composed MCP tools, servers, and integrations with the security and reliability provided by Kong AI Gateway.
Volcano: Open-Source SDK for Agent Developers
Kong introduced Volcano, a lightweight SDK to build, test, and deploy MCP-powered agents. It integrates cleanly with APIs, MCP servers, and AI systems governed by Konnect, giving teams a simple way to move from prototype to production.
Get the SDK on GitHub and learn more at volcano.dev.
Why this matters for platform and app teams
- Faster time to production: Auto-generate MCP servers from existing APIs and reuse policies instead of building one-off integrations.
- Consistent access control: Centralize authentication with OAuth 2.1 and reduce configuration drift across teams and environments.
- Full-funnel visibility: Track tool usage, prompts, and workflow performance to optimize costs and reliability.
- Unified governance: Manage MCP tools alongside APIs and LLM analytics in Konnect to enforce standards by default.
Get started
- Explore the MCP gateway capabilities in Kong AI Gateway.
- Build agents with the Volcano SDK and docs at volcano.dev.
Helpful references
- Learn about MCP: modelcontextprotocol.io
- OAuth 2.1 draft (for policy and auth planning): IETF datatracker
About Kong Inc.
Kong helps organizations - from startups to Fortune 500s - ship APIs and AI integrations faster with strong governance. Learn more at konghq.com or follow @Kong on X.
If your team is upskilling for agentic AI and API-driven workflows, explore curated developer programs at Complete AI Training.
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