Reshaping The Identity Market

Okta Wednesday announced the third-biggest acquisition in cybersecurity history, agreeing to scoop up Auth0 for a whopping $6.5 billion, more than triple the $1.92 billion valuation the Bellevue, Wash.-based identity star received in July 2020. In terms of size, the Okta-Auth0 deal trails only Broadcom’s $10.7 billion acquisition of Symantec in August 2019 and Intel’s $7.6 billion buy of McAfee in July 2010.

The Auth0 purchase will ensure identity becomes one of the more important clouds inside an organization for the decade to come, Okta CEO Todd McKinnon told investors Wednesday. It’ll also help make Okta the identity standard across organizations by supporting more use cases that developers need, according to McKinnon.

But investors are concerned with how much Okta is spending on the all-stock deal as well as the San Francisco-based identity giant’s lowered profitability outlook, resulting in a precipitous stock drop Thursday morning.

Here are the 10 most interesting things McKinnon, Auth0 CEO Eugenio Pace, Okta COO Frederic Kerrest and incoming Okta CFO Michael Kourey had to say about the identity megadeal.