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Kong said AI Gateway 2.2 became generally available in Kong Konnect on September 30, 2026, adding announced controls for MCP tools, identity-aware policies, modality-specific cost accounting and more provider integrations. Kong described several related governance products as roadmap items, not as features included in the 2.2 launch.

What Kong AI Gateway 2.2 adds

Kong calls AI Gateway 2.2 a standalone AI-native platform with its own release cadence. The company said the release was generally available in Kong Konnect without requiring beta enablement. The capabilities below are Kong’s descriptions; the announcement did not include independent user testing or comparative benchmarks.

Control access to MCP tools

MCP Server Bundling consolidates multiple MCP servers behind one Kong route. Kong says callers are exposed only to the tools they are authorized to see and execute. The governance value is that access can be managed at the gateway rather than treating every connected tool as equally available to every caller.

Apply policies to authenticated identities

Kong says rate limits, analytics, cost attribution and access control can use an authenticated principal instead of a gateway-local Consumer. This gives policy handling an identity-aware option; the announcement does not establish how organizations must map or configure identities in their environments.

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Account for costs across modalities

The release adds dynamic pricing that accounts separately for text, audio, image, video, cache reads and cache writes. Kong also says AI Gateway 2.2 supports Headroom for prompt compression. These are billing and prompt-management capabilities described by the vendor, not evidence of a particular cost reduction.

Authenticate to Amazon Bedrock AgentCore

Kong lists declarative, platform-managed SigV4 authentication for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore. SigV4 is the AWS request-signing approach named in the announcement; Kong presents its support as a way to manage that authentication through the platform.

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Connect to additional model and provider environments

Kong says AI Gateway 2.2 adds native support for Microsoft Foundry, Amazon SageMaker and Kimi, as well as support for Jev. The announcement names these additions but does not provide comparative performance data for the integrations.

What is available now versus planned

The distinction matters: Kong’s September 30 announcement identifies AI Gateway 2.2 as generally available, while a separate Kong Konnect announcement describes future governance capabilities as roadmap items.

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Status Capability What Kong describes
AI Gateway 2.2, announced generally available September 30, 2026 MCP Server Bundling Multiple MCP servers consolidated into one route, with caller-specific visibility and execution authorization for tools.
AI Gateway 2.2, announced generally available September 30, 2026 Identity-aware policies Rate limits, analytics, cost attribution and access control can use an authenticated principal rather than a gateway-local Consumer.
AI Gateway 2.2, announced generally available September 30, 2026 Dynamic pricing and Headroom Separate accounting for text, audio, image, video, cache reads and cache writes, plus support for prompt compression.
AI Gateway 2.2, announced generally available September 30, 2026 Provider support and AWS authentication Native support for Microsoft Foundry, Amazon SageMaker and Kimi; support for Jev; and managed SigV4 authentication for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore.
Kong Konnect roadmap Webhook Engine Planned event-driven integrations.
Kong Konnect roadmap Registry & Catalog Planned discovery and management for agents and MCP assets.
Kong Konnect roadmap Token Vault Planned brokering of downstream credentials.
Kong Konnect roadmap Context Mesh Planned dynamic discovery of enterprise tools and APIs.
Kong Konnect roadmap AI Cost Management Planned spend visibility and attribution.
Kong Konnect roadmap Advanced AI Observability Planned observability across interactions in AI conversations.

Kong’s roadmap announcement presents the latter six capabilities as upcoming. It does not establish them as generally available with AI Gateway 2.2.

Why AI gateway governance matters

As organizations connect AI models and agents to internal tools, governance involves more than routing requests. Administrators also need to decide which identities can invoke which tools, apply policy consistently, understand usage costs and observe interactions. Kong’s 2.2 announcement addresses some of these areas through its MCP, identity and cost-accounting features; the separate roadmap points to broader catalog, credential, context and observability capabilities.

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Kong Senior Vice President of Product Reza Shafii said, “The promise of agentic AI is not just about what an agent can do, but whether an enterprise can confidently put it to work.” He added that this requires visibility, control over what agents access and execute, and the ability to manage risks and economics. Those comments describe Kong’s rationale for the product direction, not an independent assessment of its effectiveness.

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What Kong Volcano is—and how it relates

Kong announced Volcano separately as an AI-native platform for building, deploying and operating AI agents and modern web applications. Kong says it brings together durable compute, branchable PostgreSQL databases, file storage, authentication, real-time services, workflows and other infrastructure. Techstrong.ai reported that Volcano can be used on its own or with Kong’s AI gateway.

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Kong’s Volcano announcement said compute sandboxing would follow shortly after the announcement; it did not establish that sandboxing was available at launch. Kong CTO and co-founder Marco Palladino described Volcano as a “batteries included” platform and said the goal was to let developers focus on applications instead of assembling underlying infrastructure.

What the announcement does—and does not—show

Kong’s release establishes what the company says AI Gateway 2.2 includes and how it positions the product. It does not provide independent proof that the features reduce spending, prevent security incidents or outperform other gateways. The reviewed announcements also give no attributable performance, adoption, cost-savings or incident-rate figures. Organizations assessing fit should verify the current feature details and availability with Kong and compare products against their own requirements for tool authorization, identity policies, modality-aware accounting, provider support and roadmap maturity.

Sources

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.