Glossary
AI gateway
A central proxy for model calls that adds routing, logging, quotas and policy enforcement.
A gateway gives an organisation cost visibility by team and feature, an audit trail of every prompt, provider failover and enforceable policy, without slowing teams down.
It is the component that makes central AI governance possible without becoming an approval queue.
Adoption is the hard part, not the build. A gateway that is slower or more awkward than a direct API key will be routed around within a month, so the design goal is to make it the path of least resistance, instant key issuance, no approval queue, and better observability than teams would get on their own.
Log enough to debug, not everything forever. Full prompt and response capture is invaluable for a week and a liability after a year, particularly where prompts contain personal data, so retention should be set deliberately at the outset.
Related terms, in context
The concepts you almost always meet alongside ai gateway.
- Model routing
- Sending each request to the cheapest model that handles it adequately.
- AI governance
- The controls, documentation and evidence that let an AI system pass an audit.
- Inference cost optimisation
- Reducing what AI features cost to run, usually 40 to 70% without measurable quality loss.
Where this shows up in our work
AI gateway is not an abstraction for us. It is a decision we make on live projects. It shows up most directly in enterprise ai platform, llm cost optimisation, where getting it wrong has a cost someone can measure.
If you are evaluating a vendor on this, the useful question is not whether they can define the term. It is what they measure, what they would refuse to do, and what happens in their system when the assumption behind ai gateway stops holding.
Questions
What is AI gateway?
A central proxy for model calls that adds routing, logging, quotas and policy enforcement.
Does Orqent Labs build this?
Yes, Enterprise AI Platform Development and LLM Cost Optimisation. We work across India, covering all 19,238 PIN codes remotely.
Building something that involves ai gateway?
We will tell you honestly whether it is the right approach for your problem.
Or email bd@dtrasglobal.com · call +91 74118 77878