Okta ‘Accelerating’ Privileged Access Growth Amid Shift To Agentic: COO

The identity security vendor beat analyst expectations for its latest quarter Tuesday, the same day it announced plans to acquire privileged access management startup Axiom Security.

Okta sees privileged access management as the “next area” where partners and customers are looking for deeper capabilities from the identity security vendor, prompting the company to ramp up its efforts in the segment including through M&A, according to Okta President and COO Eric Kelleher.

In an interview with CRN Tuesday, Kelleher pointed to major dynamics in the market — including the shift to agentic AI and the many organizations now seeking a single platform for identity — that are making privileged access management a natural area of expansion for the company. While Okta already has an offering in the privileged access category, the company is aiming to beef up its capabilities with the planned acquisition of Axiom Security, announced earlier on Tuesday.

“Our privileged access product is the next area where customers are pulling us and driving us to innovate, and we've been investing heavily in that area,” Kelleher said. “It's been on a growth path similar to [identity] governance. But our Axiom news today is very specifically targeted at accelerating the growth and helping us solve more use cases for privileged access, in particular with Kubernetes and databases.”

Founded in 2021 in Israel, Axiom Security offers privileged access management that was built to meet the needs of cloud environments as well as SaaS and databases, Okta CTO Abhi Sawant wrote in a post announcing the deal Tuesday. Key capabilities offered by Axiom include just-in-time access as well as automated workflows for requests and approvals, according to Sawant.

Okta did not disclose financial terms for the deal, which is expected to close in September.

Meanwhile, Okta also reported financial results Tuesday for the second quarter of its fiscal 2026, ended July 31, which surpassed Wall Street analyst expectations. Revenue grew 13 percent year-over-year to reach $728 million for the quarter, well above the analyst consensus estimate of $711.9 million.

Okta’s stock price rose 1.6 percent in after-hours trading Tuesday, to $93 a share.

Speaking with CRN, Kelleher said that the growing adoption of AI agents will be among the key drivers going forward for the company’s identity security platform, and particularly for its privileged access management capabilities.

“Those credentials for service accounts and for agents need to be vaulted and federated and rotated through a managed system, and our privileged access system [can] solve those use cases,” he said. “All of these needs apply to human identities, non-human machine identities and agentic identities. And now we believe we're very well-positioned to help solve those use cases for all of our customers.”