Okta The Oktane Call 2026

You are part of the biggest Oktane ever. Thank you for being here. It was 1 year ago that we introduced this simple but powerful concept, and that was, to secure AI, we needed a powerful new identity type. An identity type where every AI agent got their own identity. I've been on a plane this last year almost every week, talking to all of you about your challenges and what you're looking to get out of this technology, and the feedback has been amazing. So thank you for meeting with me, thank you for informing us on this journey and help us build the right thing for the industry at this time. I ran across this quote recently, and I thought it was an accurate reflection of our industry right now.

Talent hits a target that no one else can hit, but genius hits a target no one else can see." AI agents, they promise to do both. I think as an industry, we're focused on the talent side of this right now. We're looking at our existing processes, making them more effective, making them more efficient, getting cost optimization. But the real prize, the real potential is genius. How do we get to that product breakthrough that no one even knew was possible? How do we invent new things? How do we discover new cures for diseases? This is the potential of AI. So how are we going to make that happen? How do we get there? I think watching this technology the last couple of years, we have an intuitive feel for this. It's about more connections. The models get better when you give them more data.

Systems get better when you connect them to more other systems to allow them to take actions. That is how we get to genius. That is how we get to genius. We also know, living in the world right now, that this comes with risk. So every process you optimize, you hear a headline about a cyberattack, someone taking advantage of this technology and breaking in. We all understand that, when we're looking for the cure for disease, we could unleash something like a bioweapon, and that's risk. So as an industry right now, we're being forced to choose. We either lock it all down and don't connect AI to anything, and get the security. That's no good. We don't want to lock it down. Or we let it connect to everything, free it up, and go for the innovation. It's not a great choice.

How do we get the best of both worlds here? The solution is simple, not easy, but simple, and that is visibility and control. Bringing visibility and control is how we break this deadlock and get security and innovation. At Okta, our vision as a company is to free everyone to safely use any technology. So I feel like the luckiest guy in the world leading this company at this time. We're at exactly the perfect moment. We have to bring visibility and control to this industry right now. That is how we're going to enable all of you to safely use any technology. We're the perfect company at the perfect time, and it's incredibly motivating to all of us to go make this happen and change the industry.

We've been at this for a while, 17 years, and if you are unclear how long that is, here's a picture of me right about the time I started Okta, and our daughter getting ready to go play some basketball on a Saturday. This little girl, she's going to be like this forever. This past weekend, in case you were wondering how long 17 years is, we dropped her off at university. Very excited for her. It's definitely a little bit melancholy. Her first day on campus, she called me to complain about having too many systems to log into. I said, "Julia, evidently, 20,000 customers isn't enough. We need 20,001. We'll get to work on that." Every month, 58 billion authentications, 58 billion connections between people and machines, and the technology and the resources you need to be effective and productive.

We're in the perfect position to help match security and innovation by solving the challenges of our industry. A key part of doing that is standardization. Technology is too complex. It's too isolated. It doesn't work well together. To bring innovation and security together, we're going to need standardization on a massive scale. Today, we're going to talk about that in three sections. The first section is the blueprint for the secure agentic enterprise. Second, Agent SSO, a powerful new standard that enables agents to connect seamlessly to resources. Finally, Okta for AI Agents. Let's start with the blueprint. People ask me, "Todd, what's your biggest competition?" They expect me to mention another vendor or a platform. The answer is something different, actually. Our biggest competition is confusion. When I talk to all of you're confused.

Every vendor is coming at you saying that their solution is the one solution that will help you secure everything, will help you create all the AI you need, and lead your organization to glory. You all know intuitively that reality is quite different. What's happening in our industry right now is every layer of the technology stack is being transformed by AI. It's not just one new group of vendors or tools or companies, it's every layer of the stack, from infrastructure to applications to data to agents you're building yourself, agents startups are selling you. No one company can secure agents alone. It's not realistic. We're talking about a complete transformation of the technology stack. We took this feedback, and we're going to do something about it.

We went out and we've locked arm in arm with some of the leading companies in our industry to create a Blueprint Alliance. All these companies, industry leaders, AWS, CrowdStrike, Salesforce, and many others, they're motivated by the same thing we are. Confusion is their competition as well, and we need to work together to clarify that. The Blueprint Alliance, working together, is centered on four key questions. The first question is: Where are my agents? Second question is: What can they do? Thirdly: What are they actually doing? Fourth is: How do I respond? If we answer these four questions, it'll clarify that confusion and put us all on this journey toward building the secure agentic enterprise. The teams have been together, the top product and engineering people from these companies have been together hammering this out in quite a sophisticated level of detail.

And just like a blueprint for a building, it has the electrical sub plan, it has the structural plan, it has the plumbing plan. Our blueprint is broken down into four sections. The first section answers the question: Where are my agents? This is about visibility and control. This is about an agentic registry, so you can keep agents from multiple systems coordinated and give them all a unique identity. The second question is about: What can they do? What connections can they make? What do they have the permissions to do? Making sure those permissions match the appropriate entitlements that those agents need. This is also about governance of the life cycle of the agent, to make sure that an agent today and tomorrow and a month and a year from now still needs the access that it is granted. The third pillar is the runtime pillar.

It is actually: What are the agents actually doing? What is the intent of the call or the application for that agent? And how does it match up with the actual performance and the actual execution? This is things like network monitoring and other types of monitoring and observability so that we can see that the agents are doing actually what we think they should be doing. Finally, all of this is incredibly valuable because it sets you up and defines how you respond. The kill switch everyone talks about is in this pillar. If something goes wrong, if it gets off track, if it is malicious or it is just an error, how do we actually disconnect it and make sure it stays in line with what we want it to do? This is all built on a common framework of risk signals.

The alliance has defined what the risk signals and what the protocol format for sharing the risk signals is. So different parts of the blueprint and different components of the blueprint can share risk signals with a common understanding of what they mean. And of course, it is consistently defined how telemetry and observability and monitoring, because the whole point of this is bringing visibility and control. So central telemetry and logging is absolutely important. There is a ton of detail here, and the keynote would be way too long to go into all of it. So you get out your phone and scan this QR code. It will take you to a couple important resources. It will take you to the white paper that the alliance has defined that lays this all out. And you can also order the room service menu from here.

We are super lucky today to be joined by a leader from one of the founding members of the Blueprint Alliance. So please, let us give a warm welcome to Chet Kapoor, Vice President from Amazon.

Chet. How's it going, Todd?

It's great to see you, Chet. Sorry about your travel problems today.