Okta’s CEO is betting big on AI agent identity

oday, I’m talking with Todd McKinnon, who is co-founder and CEO of Okta, a platform that lets big companies manage security and identity across all the apps and services their employees use.

Think of it like login management — actually, that’s a great way to think about it because the way most people encounter Okta is that it’s the thing that makes you log in again right before joining a meeting several times a week, so then you’re late for the meeting… Can you tell we use Okta?

Anyhow, all of that is a big business — Okta has a $14 billion market cap.

But big software as a service companies like Okta are under a lot of pressure in the age of AI.

Why would you pay their fees when you can just vibe-code your own tools?

This so-called Saaspocalypse is a big deal, and Todd recently said he was “paranoid” about it on Okta’s most recent earnings call.

So we dug into it, and how he’s putting that paranoia into practice inside Okta — what he’s changing, and what opportunities he’s going after to head off the apocalypse.

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The biggest opportunity you’ll hear us talk about is some deep Decoder bait: the idea that it’s not just people whose access and security credentials need management, but also AI agents inside a corporation.

This concept has really exploded with the rise of OpenClaw , which came with a ton of security challenges .

Can any company keep users, platforms, and data safe if people are just going to buy a Mac Mini, hand their credentials to it, and let OpenClaw do whatever it wants with them?

Is simply installing a “kill switch” at the agent level — as Todd suggests — enough?

You’ll hear Todd say that agent identity is something in between a person and a system, which is some of the richest Decoder bait possible, so we spent some time digging into that.

It also seems like we are on the cusp of some of the goofiest org chart ideas in history, as people start to manage hybrid teams of people and agents, and I wanted to know how Todd was thinking about that inside of Okta itself.

Like so many of our guests lately, it’s clear that Todd’s a Decoder fan, so this one got deep, about the very nature of building software itself, and what it means to run a software company.

That’s right, the Okta episode got emotional.

Hang on, it might surprise you.

Okay: Okta CEO Todd McKinnon.

原文链接: The Verge