Automate & Federate: How PayPal's new API strategy is built on AI & GraphQL
An insider's view of building PayPal's graph from the product team up
March 31, 2026
@10:00 AM PT | 1:00 PM ET | 7:00 PM CET
Inside the Conversation
After years of running GraphQL at scale, PayPal saw an opportunity to raise the bar — not by pushing architecture from a platform team, but by embedding the graph where it solves a real product need. The result: a graph that ships product, not one that lives in an architecture deck.
Joey Nenni, the architect behind PayPal’s federated graph joins us to break down the "Automate and Federate" strategy behind the rebuild — a ground-up effort launched just six months ago. With AI replacing manual review bottlenecks, API development moves at a pace that traditional human-driven governance simply can't match. Hundreds of developers have submitted over 1,500 schema PRs in just five months — and what's emerged is a new "headless" API interface for every PayPal experience.
What you’ll learn:
Why solving a product team's problem beats pushing architecture from the top down
The design conviction behind a "headless" graph built to outlive any single app
How AI-powered schema automation is changing the speed equation for API development
Meet your speakers
