Mashery, founded in 2006, invented the category. Before it, an API was something you built and ran yourself. Mashery created the idea that keys, rate limiting, analytics, developer portals and documentation were a distinct layer of value somebody could sell you.
Apigee took that model to the enterprise — large regulated organizations, heavyweight gateway features — and went public before Google acquired it. 3Scale went the other way, building a freemium, self-service platform any developer could stand up without a procurement process; Red Hat acquired it. Those three are the OG of API management, and between them they defined what the phrase meant for a decade.
What has happened since is unbundling. The single suite has broken into components — a gateway here, a portal there, a catalog, a governance tool, analytics, a client — often from different vendors or assembled from cloud primitives and open source. That is mostly healthy; it means you can replace one piece without replacing everything.
The consolidation half of the story is worth knowing too. This vendor landscape has been acquiring and merging in cycles since the beginning, which is a good reason to keep your contracts and rules in open formats you own rather than inside whichever platform is current.
