Okta says it is 'paranoid' as AI agents raise threat to SaaS
Mar 6th 2026
Okta CEO Todd McKinnon told investors the company is 'paranoid' about AI agents and is racing to harden identity products, while demand for its new agent-focused offerings and identity security tools is rising and helping drive better than expected results.
- CEO Todd McKinnon told investors Okta is using LLMs and developer tools but worries bots could disrupt the SaaS market.
- McKinnon said an LLM alone would struggle to match years of hardening, scale and security in SaaS products.
- Okta positions identity as core infrastructure for AI agents and expects the identity market to grow from about $20 billion to as much as $80 billion.
- Okta has roughly 20,000 customers using its identity tools to enable agents in sensitive parts of their organizations.
- Demand is surging for Auth0 for AI Agents and Okta for AI Agents, and new identity security products made up about 30 percent of Q4 bookings.
- Okta bills agents either per agent per human or by the number of system connections the agent uses.
- For the fiscal year ended January 31 Okta reported $2.9 billion in revenue, up 12 percent, net income of $235 million, and guided to about 9 percent growth next year, sending the stock up 11 percent after the report.
- Investor worry over AI coding tools has contributed to a so called SaaSpocalypse that has wiped billions from major SaaS stocks over recent months.