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Since it was founded in 2014 , India - basedPostmanhas made a name for itself as one of the most popular platforms for build and using genus Apis , with 500,000 organizations now using the table service . Like with so many other SaaS service of process , though , its valuation today isreportedlydown from its $ 5.6 billion gamy in 2021 . But the society is now jump head - first into the AI space with the launch of anAI factor builderthat immix large language fashion model and the Postman API platform , as well as a ocular editor that brings the two together to help even non - developers build and trial run AI agent .
At first , jumping into AI agents may seem like an unmatched choice for a company like Postman , but as Postman CEO and co - founder Abhinav Asthana noted when I talked to him before of the agent detergent builder ’s launch , to be utilitarian , these agents have to interact with a broad variety of services — and the way to do that is through APIs .
“ Our customer actually start asking us about this . ‘ Okay , this agent affair is kind of come up . What are you hombre doing about it ? ’ And we looked at the patterns in which they are stringing this together . Whether they ’re using homegrown systems or they ’re using some third - company stuff , APIs are a primal part of it , because there are two form of APIs : one is the LLM itself , like the OpenAI API , or the Anthropic ’s API , or perhaps a homegrown API . And the 2nd bit are tools the agent would use . So we were like , okay , Postman is help oneself developer do all thing genus Apis and if this is come out as a pattern , we should do something here , ” explain Asthana .
He also noted that a growing number of Postman user are non - developers , who want to use the service for building simple , API - centric coating . “ So when AI engineering bulge out emerging , we had to test it out a lot . We saw like , ‘ okay , can this be used ? ’ And it looks like no - codification , plus AI , plus agents is a good combo to take together , ” Asthana said .
Postman ’s API web already features anAPI hubwith contribution from over 18,000 companies , which now , in turn , also allows its users to build AI agents that can interact with these APIs . To ascertain that these agents mold as expected , Postman is adding testing and rating tools to the service to test prompts and inputs for the models it supports ( think OpenAI , Google ’s Gemini , Anthropic ’s Claude , Cohere , and Meta ’s Llama , for example ) . It then take into account drug user to apply Postman Flows , the fellowship ’s visual development environment , to make these agents and have them interact with APIs .
right on now , Postman ’s AI agents are mostly focalise on enabling back - end operations . While developers could apply the avail to power front - end service , Postman itself does n’t bid any user interface for like a shot interacting with these agent yet . Over time , this may exchange . “ We are all very bullish on agent software , but I think the modalities in which we interact with these system of rules is also decease to germinate , ” Asthana say .
Postman , of course , is not the only fellowship in this space , but on top of having its existing API hub , Asthana also believes that it can differentiate its service from others — and particularly the bombastic cloud supplier — by proffer a better developer experience . “ In my opinion , the cloud providers always prioritise consumption of the cloud over developer experience , and I mean they ’re unforced to partner with anyone who does actually give the right developer experience , ” he said .
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The company is still figuring out how to best charge for this new avail . Pricing , Asthana said , will develop over time as the team turn out how to comfortably find the value that these agents bring .
