Solo.io
Solo.io provides cloud-native API gateway, service mesh, and AI agent infrastructure built on Istio and Envoy, serving Fortune 2000 enterprises and cloud-native adopters through open-source-led enterprise subscriptions.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2017
- HeadquartersCambridge, United States
- Headcount101–250
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
Solo.io firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Solo.io
- Legal name
- Solo.io, inc.
- Website
- https://solo.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2017
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 101–250 employees
- Short description
- Solo.io provides cloud-native API gateway, service mesh, and AI agent infrastructure built on Istio and Envoy, serving Fortune 2000 enterprises and cloud-native adopters through open-source-led enterprise subscriptions.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Solo.io industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Cloud-Native Application Networking
- NAICS
- Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Cloud-Native Enablement (Containers, Kubernetes, Service Mesh) (BPAEAKAE)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Kubernetes & Container Platform Management (Private Cloud) (HDABABAC), Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Orchestration (Private-Cloud-Centric) (HDABABAE), Cloud-Native Application Development (Containers/Kubernetes/Serverless) (BPAEAFAE), Private Cloud Observability, Performance & Capacity Management (HDABABAL)
Keywords
Where Solo.io is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Cambridge
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices2 records
Markets served
Solo.io business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Enterprise Software Subscriptions: Solo.io generates revenue through enterprise software subscriptions providing commercial support, advanced features, and enterprise capabilities for their open-source products including Solo Enterprise for agentgateway, Solo Enterprise for Istio, and Solo Enterprise for kgateway.
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels10 records
Solo.io product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Solo.io provides cloud-native application networking products built on open-source projects Istio and Envoy, including an AI/agentic infrastructure portfolio (agentgateway, kagent, agentregistry) and a cloud connectivity portfolio (kgateway API/AI gateway and Solo Enterprise for Istio service mesh). The company sells enterprise subscriptions (Solo Enterprise editions) that add commercial support, security, observability, and compliance on top of its open-source offerings for Fortune 2000 customers running Kubernetes.
Product overview
Solo.io is a unified cloud-native application networking platform providing both AI/agentic infrastructure products and cloud connectivity solutions. The product portfolio centers on agentgateway (AI-native connectivity layer for agent-to-agent and agent-to-tool traffic), agentregistry (centralized registry for AI applications and MCP tools), and kagent (Kubernetes-native framework for autonomous AI agents) for AI/agentic workloads, alongside kgateway (cloud-native API gateway and AI gateway) and Solo Enterprise for Istio for service mesh/cloud connectivity. The platform is built on open-source technologies including Istio, Envoy, Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, SPIFFE/SPIRE, and supports protocols like MCP and A2A for AI agent interoperability. Solo.io also contributes to and maintains open-source projects including AgentBench, agentevals, and CNCF-hosted projects like kgateway.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- agentgateway AI-native gateway providing centralized control over AI agent traffic through governance, security, cost management, and observability. Supports A2A (Agent-to-Agent) and MCP (Model Context Protocol) protocols for agent connectivity and tool integrations. Built for enterprises running AI agents on Kubernetes.
- agentregistry Centralized open source registry for AI applications providing Agent Skills and MCP registries for Kubernetes. Enables enterprises to manage, share, and operationalize AI capabilities securely across AI ecosystems.
- kagent Open-source Kubernetes-native framework for building and operating autonomous AI agents. Brings agentic AI to cloud native infrastructure with support for Google ADK, LangGraph frameworks, and Agent Substrate runtime.
- kgateway Cloud-native API Gateway and AI Gateway, formerly Gloo Gateway. Next-generation gateway implementation for Kubernetes with enhanced AI/LLM routing, MCP support, and service mesh waypoint capabilities. CNCF donated project.
- Solo Enterprise for Istio Enterprise support and distribution for Istio service mesh including Solo's contributions to ambient mesh, multi-cluster management, and production-ready features beyond open source Istio.
- Solo Enterprise for agentgateway Enterprise-grade edition of agentgateway with enhanced security, observability, compliance features, and dedicated support for AI agent governance and enterprise MCP deployments.
- Solo Enterprise for kagent Enterprise-grade edition of kagent providing advanced AI agent management capabilities for Kubernetes deployments with additional support and features.
- Solo Labs for MCP Enterprise offering focused on Model Context Protocol tooling and enhanced MCP support for accelerating adoption and deployment of MCP tools in enterprise environments.
- AgentBench Open-source benchmarking framework for evaluating agentic AI systems. Integrates with Gloo Platform and Envoy, uses OpenTelemetry, and produces reproducible logs, metrics, and outcomes to evaluate agent reliability, latency, and success rates.
- agentevals Open-source framework for evaluating and benchmarking agentic AI behavior across any model or framework using OpenTelemetry. Enables continuous validation of agent behavior against golden eval sets without requiring agent reruns.
Quantifiable outcome
- Token usage reduction through progressive disclosure in MCP scenarios
- +1 more outcomes
Companies that use Solo.io
Customer profileNamed customers18 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles2 records
Solo.io technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration9 records
AI capability6 records
Feature6 records
Solo.io partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core and strategic.
- NVIDIAcoreSolo.io integrated NemoClaw open-source governance framework into its kagent runtime environment for deploying AI agents on Kubernetes clusters. NemoClaw was created by NVIDIA and advanced under CNCF auspices.
- Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)coreBlock, Anthropic, and OpenAI launched the Agentic AI Foundation under Linux Foundation. Solo.io's agentgateway is mentioned as moving to neutral governance under the Linux Foundation as part of this ecosystem.
- Linux FoundationcoreLinux Foundation adopted the agentgateway project, an open source AI-native proxy created by Solo.io, aimed at enhancing connectivity, security, and observability in AI agent environments. The project supports protocols like A2A and MCP and has attracted contributions from major companies.
- AWSstrategicAWS contributed to the agentgateway project under Linux Foundation, supporting AI agent governance and connectivity standards.
- Red HatstrategicRed Hat contributed to the agentgateway project under Linux Foundation, supporting AI agent governance standards.
- CiscostrategicCisco contributed to the agentgateway project under Linux Foundation for AI agent connectivity.
- IBMstrategicIBM contributed to the agentgateway project under Linux Foundation.
- ShellstrategicShell contributed to the agentgateway project under Linux Foundation for AI agent standards.
- HuaweistrategicHuawei contributed to the Agentgateway project under Linux Foundation for AI agent governance.
- Microsoft CorporationcoreSolo.io announced partnership with Microsoft to integrate its Gloo Mesh and Gloo Gateway solutions with Microsoft Azure for optimized multi-cluster management and security.
Scale indicators9 records
Recent moves8 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Solo.io competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Kong Inc. Kong provides an API gateway and service connectivity platform (Kong Gateway, Kong Mesh) for cloud-native and microservices architectures. It is a direct competitor to Solo.io's kgateway API gateway and Solo Enterprise for Istio service mesh offerings, targeting similar enterprise and platform engineering buyers.
- Tetrate: Tetrate offers an enterprise service mesh built on Istio (Tetrate Service Bridge) with multi-cluster, multi-cloud management. It is a direct peer competing for the same Fortune 2000 Istio enterprise distribution wallet that Solo.io addresses through Solo Enterprise for Istio.
- Buoyant: Buoyant is the primary commercial sponsor of the Linkerd CNCF service mesh project, offering enterprise support and management features. It competes directly with Solo.io's Solo Enterprise for Istio in the cloud-native service mesh space for Kubernetes platform teams.
- Traefik Labs: Traefik Labs offers Traefik Proxy, an open-source cloud-native application proxy and ingress controller for Kubernetes, plus enterprise editions. It competes directly with Solo.io's kgateway for Kubernetes ingress and API gateway workloads.
- Cilium (Isovalent, Cisco): Cilium (originally Isovalent, now part of Cisco) provides eBPF-based cloud-native networking, service mesh, and security for Kubernetes. It competes with Solo.io's networking and service mesh stack at the Kubernetes data plane layer.
- Tyk Technologies: Tyk provides an open-source and enterprise API gateway and API management platform. It is a direct peer competing for the same cloud-native API gateway workloads as Solo.io's kgateway product.
Broad incumbents
- HashiCorp (IBM): HashiCorp (now part of IBM) provides Consul service mesh, Nomad, Vault, and Terraform across cloud infrastructure. While broader in scope than Solo.io, Consul service mesh competes for the same enterprise connectivity and multi-cluster orchestration use cases.
- F5 Inc. F5 (via NGINX) provides API gateway, ingress, and application services across enterprise and cloud-native deployments. It is a broad incumbent that overlaps with Solo.io's kgateway and cloud connectivity offerings as part of a larger application delivery portfolio.
- Cloudflare: Cloudflare offers API gateway, edge networking, and developer services across a broad platform. While not exclusively focused on Kubernetes-native workloads, Cloudflare Workers and API services overlap with Solo.io's cloud connectivity and AI gateway offerings.
- VMware Tanzu (Broadcom): VMware Tanzu (now part of Broadcom) offers a comprehensive cloud-native application platform including service mesh (Tanzu Service Mesh), API connectivity, and Kubernetes management. It is a broad incumbent that overlaps with multiple Solo.io product lines as part of an enterprise platform suite.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Solo.io social profiles
Digital presenceSolo.io financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Solo.io leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles8 records
Solo.io funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds4 records
Investors6 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Solo.io M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Solo.io
What does Solo.io do?
Solo.io provides cloud-native application networking products built on open-source projects Istio and Envoy, including an AI/agentic infrastructure portfolio (agentgateway, kagent, agentregistry) and a cloud connectivity portfolio (kgateway API/AI gateway and Solo Enterprise for Istio service mesh). The company sells enterprise subscriptions (Solo Enterprise editions) that add commercial support, security, observability, and compliance on top of its open-source offerings for Fortune 2000 customers running Kubernetes.
Is Solo.io a public or private company?
Solo.io is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Solo.io founded?
Solo.io was founded in 2017. It employs 101 to 250 people.
Where is Solo.io based?
Solo.io is headquartered in Cambridge, United States, in the North America region.
How does Solo.io make money?
One revenue line is on record: enterprise Software Subscriptions.
Who are Solo.io's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Kong Inc., Tetrate, Buoyant, Traefik Labs, Cilium (Isovalent, Cisco) and Tyk Technologies. Broad incumbents are HashiCorp (IBM), F5 Inc., Cloudflare and VMware Tanzu (Broadcom).
Does Solo.io have an API?
Yes. Solo.io provides APIs for AI agent infrastructure management. Products include kagent for Kubernetes-native AI agent lifecycle management, agentgateway for AI-native connectivity between agents and tools (supporting MCP and A2A protocols), and kgateway for API gateway functionality. The platform exposes configuration and management APIs for deploying, routing, and governing AI agents and their interactions. Developer documentation is at www.solo.io/docs.
What industry is Solo.io in?
Solo.io's product category is Cloud-Native Application Networking. Its primary akta.pro industry code is BPAEAKAE, Cloud-Native Enablement (Containers, Kubernetes, Service Mesh), with a secondary code of HDABABAC, Kubernetes & Container Platform Management (Private Cloud). Its NAICS code is 54151 and its SIC code is 7373.