Okta Targets AI Agent Confusion With Identity Security Push

Key Points

• Okta is positioning identity security as a solution to AI-agent uncertainty, focusing on where agents operate, which systems they can access, and what actions they are authorized to perform. The company says agent identities can be governed through existing identity tools, including provisioning, deprovisioning, auditing and access controls.
• Okta’s AI-agent offering has completed dozens of transactions, including a multimillion-dollar deal with a Fortune 50 healthcare company whose agent count reportedly grew from 50 to 1,500 in weeks. The company is initially pricing the service as a per-user uplift rather than charging by agent, with mostly one-year agreements.
• Beyond AI agents, Okta reported strength across its workforce and customer identity businesses, with new products contributing 30% of quarterly bookings. Its strategy emphasizes platform independence, broad integrations, ecosystem partnerships and continued product expansion following the Permiso acquisition.

Okta NASDAQ: OKTA President and COO Eric Kelleher said enterprise customers are increasingly seeking guidance on securing AI agents, with uncertainty around the emerging technology representing a central challenge for the identity-security market.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, Kelleher said Okta is positioning its AI-agent offerings around three core questions: where agents are deployed, what systems they can connect to, and what actions they are authorized to perform.

“The biggest competitor we really have right now is just confusion,” Kelleher said. He described a security environment in which enterprises face a growing number of vendor claims while attempting to understand the risks posed by autonomous software.

Okta Positions Identity Platform for AI Agents

Kelleher said Okta’s Blueprint for the Secure Agentic Enterprise is intended to simplify the process for customers exploring agent deployments. The company’s Okta for AI Agents offering maps to the blueprint’s focus on discovery, connectivity and authorization, he said.

He pushed back on the view that managing agent identities requires an architecture fundamentally separate from human identity systems. While some agents may be temporary, Kelleher said not all agents are ephemeral and each still requires an identity that an enterprise can track and govern.

Okta’s Universal Directory, which has historically supported workforce, customer and service-account identities, is expanding to include agentic identities, according to Kelleher. He said customers can use the company’s recently launched Agent SSO, now generally available on its workforce platform, to add agent identities to their directories at no additional charge.

The same governance capabilities used for human identities can be applied to agents, including just-in-time provisioning and deprovisioning, auditability, and controls over access permissions, he said.

Early Sales and Pricing Approach

Okta’s AI-agent product became generally available April 30, and Kelleher said the company has completed dozens of transactions so far. He characterized the sample size as small but cited several drivers behind early customer adoption, including forward-looking chief information officers and chief information security officers, as well as organizations that have identified unexpected growth in agent activity.

He pointed to a multimillion-dollar transaction with a Fortune 50 healthcare company. At an initial discovery call, the customer reported having 50 deployed agents; when Okta returned several weeks later, that number had risen to 1,500, Kelleher said.

To reduce buying friction, Okta is initially pricing its agentic-identity offering as an uplift to per-user pricing rather than charging based on the number or type of agents. Kelleher said that structure is “imperfect from an agent architecture standpoint,” but easier for customers that do not yet know how extensively they will deploy agents.

Most early agreements are one-year transactions, he said, giving both Okta and customers time to collect data before pricing models potentially evolve. The company established its initial pricing in consultation with hundreds of large enterprise customers, according to Kelleher.

Neutrality and Ecosystem Strategy

Kelleher said the rise of identity-focused acquisitions by security and technology companies validates Okta’s longstanding view that identity is a core security perimeter. He argued that Okta’s independence and more than 8,000 out-of-the-box integrations differentiate the company from vendors building identity products primarily to support their own technology stacks.

“The stack vendors that are dabbling in identity are just that, they’re dabbling,” Kelleher said, adding that customers want flexibility as AI models and related technologies evolve rapidly.

On CrowdStrike, Kelleher said the companies have thousands of mutual customers and that CrowdStrike’s endpoint position and shared threat signals are complementary to Okta’s products. He said Okta has not seen a material change in competitive dynamics involving CrowdStrike.

Kelleher also discussed Auth0 for AI Agents and Okta’s Cross App Access standard, which is designed to help developers build agents that can connect securely with applications using the Model Context Protocol. He said Cross App Access is an open standard that has been embraced as an extension to the protocol, and that Okta’s products support it out of the box.

Core Business and Go-to-Market Execution

Beyond AI agents, Kelleher said Okta’s second quarter reflected strength across its core workforce and customer identity businesses, which he described as roughly a 59% and 41% mix, respectively. He also cited strong performance in large enterprise, small business and commercial markets, public sector, and partner-led business.

The company has reorganized its sales force around buyer personas, separating most sellers into Okta platform specialists focused on CIOs and CISOs and Auth0 specialists focused on developers. Kelleher said the changes have supported stronger pipeline generation, cross-selling and upselling.

Okta’s new product portfolio contributed 30% of bookings in the reported quarter, he said. The company believes it currently has appropriate sales capacity and does not plan to expand capacity immediately because account continuity has helped execution.

Kelleher said Okta is also accelerating product development under technology leader Ric Smith. He highlighted the company’s Permiso acquisition, which closed on the day of earnings and is expected to accelerate the roadmap for Identity Threat Protection, as well as its attainment of IL5 authorization for its FedRAMP business.

Looking ahead, Kelleher said Okta sees continued opportunity in its core identity markets alongside what he called the company’s “Horizon 2” opportunity in agentic identity. He said the company plans to provide additional partnership, product-roadmap and agentic-identity updates at its upcoming Oktane user conference.

About Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA)

Okta, Inc provides cloud-based identity and access management solutions for organizations. Its platform helps businesses securely connect employees, customers, partners and applications while managing authentication, authorization and user access across cloud, on-premises and mobile environments.

The company's offerings include single sign-on, multifactor authentication, adaptive access controls, lifecycle management, identity governance and privileged access capabilities. Through its Customer Identity Cloud, powered by Auth0, Okta also provides tools for developers and businesses to embed authentication and authorization features into applications and digital services.

Founded in 2009 by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest, Okta completed its initial public offering in 2017.

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