F5 has announced early access to its F5 AI Gateway, a containerized solution designed to streamline interactions between applications, APIs, and large language models (LLMs). The gateway aims to enhance performance, observability, and security, enabling enterprises to reduce costs while improving data quality and user experience. By integrating seamlessly with F5’s existing portfolio, the AI Gateway offers security and operations teams a robust pathway to adopt and manage AI services.

The move comes as enterprises increasingly embrace AI technologies. According to F5’s State of AI Application Strategy Report, 75% of enterprises are implementing AI-driven strategies. These applications often rely on APIs for delivery and consumption, but scaling and securing AI services remain significant challenges. Enterprises must address GPU compute costs, system responsiveness, and evolving regulatory compliance demands.

“LLMs are unlocking new levels of productivity and enhanced user experiences for customers, but they also require oversight, deep inspection at inference-time, and defense against new types of threats,” explained Kunal Anand, Chief Innovation Officer at F5. “By addressing these new requirements and integrating with F5’s trusted solutions for API traffic management, we’re enabling customers to confidently and efficiently deploy AI-powered applications in a massively larger threat landscape.”

Real-world AI deployments hinge on optimizing interactions across entire data ecosystems. The AI Gateway observes, secures, and optimizes variables to mitigate threats, ensure compliance, and cut costs. Designed for deployment across any cloud or data center, it natively integrates with NGINX and BIG-IP platforms, leveraging F5’s expertise in app security and delivery across traditional, multicloud, or edge environments.

The AI Gateway’s open extensibility empowers organizations to customize security and control protocols dynamically, enabling real-time adherence to security and compliance requirements. This flexibility supports businesses at any stage of their AI adoption journey.

“AI-powered applications will become a cornerstone for nearly every business and organization in the coming years,” said Shari Lava, Senior Director of AI and Automation at IDC. “F5’s introduction of an AI gateway enhances flexibility in AI application structures while maintaining robust protection and model optimization.”

Austin Geraci, CTO of WorldTech IT, emphasized the impact of the technology, stating, “With F5 AI Gateway, semantic caching and intelligent traffic routing alone represent significant cost savings, and the unification of F5 services will save customers hundreds of hours of integration work.