Okta Acquires Permiso Security for $200M to Strengthen AI Security and Identity Threat Defense

Okta buys AI security startup Permiso; source says for about $200M

Okta on Thursday agreed to acquire AI identity security startup Permiso Security, betting that demand for protecting AI agents and other machine identities will grow as enterprises deploy autonomous software across their operations. The identity management company did not disclose the terms of the transaction. But TechCrunch has learned that the acquisition is valued at just under $200 million and is structured as an almost all-cash deal, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. A spokesperson for Okta did not dispute the figure when asked by TechCrunch, but would not comment on specifics of the deal terms. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of its fiscal 2027, Okta said, subject to customary closing conditions. Okta's move to buy Permiso comes as identity management companies seek to expand beyond verifying users at login to continuously monitoring what users, applications, and AI agents do once gaining authorized access to a network environment. That shift has intensified competition to secure machine identities as enterprises embed AI deeper into everyday operations. Permiso, which emerged from stealth in 2022, develops software that helps security teams spot suspicious activity in cloud environments after users or applications have been granted access. More recently, the startup has expanded its platform to monitor AI agents and other machine identities. Co-founded by former FireEye executives Paul Nguyen and Jason Martin, Permiso specializes in detecting attacks that use stolen or compromised identities to move through cloud infrastructure. In April, the startup also introduced SandyClaw, a platform designed to analyze AI agent skills in a sandboxed environment to identify malicious behavior before they are deployed. The deal strengthens Okta's push into securing AI agents and other non-human identities alongside its core identity management business. "Permiso will extend Okta's identity security fabric with proven identity threat detection and response capabilities, and an incredible threat research and security team that will advance Okta's threat detection and prevention capabilities," Okta's chief product officer Ely Kahn said in a prepared statement. Permiso has raised about $29 million to date, including an $18.5 million Series A round in April 2024 led by Altimeter Capital. People familiar with the financing said the Series A valued the Palo Alto-based startup at about $80 million on a post-money basis.

Okta to acquire Permiso Security in reported $200M identity security deal

Okta Inc. said today it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Permiso Security Inc., a startup whose software hunts for attackers abusing identities across cloud accounts, software-as-a-service applications and, more recently, artificial intelligence agents. No price was announced. A person with knowledge of the deal put it at just under $200 million, nearly all cash, in a report by TechCrunch. An Okta spokesperson did not dispute the number. Closing is due before the end of October, within Okta's fiscal third quarter. Guidance issued May 27 does not change. Permiso dates to 2020 and sells out of Palo Alto, California. Founders Jason Martin and Paul Nguyen both came out of FireEye Inc., and the company started selling openly two years later. Its product watches identities while they work. It ingests activity from identity providers, cloud accounts, software-as-a-service applications and infrastructure-as-code tools, then flags behavior that does not match what a given account, key or agent normally does with its access. Okta put the detection breadth at more than 2,500 research-driven signals across over 70 identity partners. Much of Permiso's early name recognition came from P0 Labs, its research arm, and the tools it gives away. CloudGrappler came first, in 2024. It hunts for known threat actor activity inside Amazon Web Services and Azure accounts. Three more landed that November 2024, taking the P0 Labs open-source count to 10. Last October brought P0LR Espresso, which flattens cloud logs from rival providers into a single format so analysts are not rewriting queries for every platform. Permiso moved into agentic security in September, extending its platform to cover what it calls AI users, AI builders and AI agents. Those capabilities were expanded this year with agent and session discovery, runtime attribution linking activity back to a specific identity, detection of over-privileged agents, kill switches and SandyClaw, a sandbox that detonates agent skills and prompts to see how they behave before they run in production. Autodesk Inc. deployed the agent tooling across its products, workforce and cloud infrastructure in May. Other customers include Nutanix Inc., Coupa Software Inc. and ACV Auctions Inc. Permiso had raised $28.5 million, including an $18.5 million Series A in April 2024 led by Altimeter Capital Management LP with participation from Point72 Ventures LLC. "We're thrilled to welcome Permiso to Okta as we help companies secure their agentic enterprises where humans, applications, service accounts, and AI agents work together," said Ely Kahn, chief product officer at Okta. "Permiso will extend Okta's identity security fabric with proven identity threat detection and response capabilities." The deal is Okta's second security purchase in under a year, following privileged access management startup Axiom Security Ltd. in August, and it fills an obvious gap in the identity security fabric strategy Okta has been assembling. Okta already sells Identity Threat Protection and posture management tools, but its runtime detection has leaned on sessions and identities inside Okta's own control plane. Permiso's detections run across the cloud accounts, keys and agents that sit outside it. Nguyen said combining Permiso's technology and expertise with Okta's platform is what makes "comprehensive identity threat protection possible at this scale."

Okta to acquire Permiso Security to strengthen identity threat detection

In a blog post, Okta cited data which shows that about 58% of executives have dealt with an AI-related security incident in the past year. Okta said Permiso will bring its large research base to the deal, drawing on thousands of identity-related detection signals across dozens of partner integrations to flag issues like excessive permissions, unused access, and unusual behaviour from AI agents. Cloud-based identity and access management company Okta has entered into a definitive deal to acquire Permiso Security, an identity security platform that detects and responds to threats from human, machine, and AI agent identities. The companies did not disclose the details of the deal, but TechCrunch reported that it values Permiso at $200 million and is expected to close in the third quarter of Okta's fiscal 2027. In a blog post, Okta cited data which shows that about 58% of executives have dealt with an AI-related security incident in the past year. Okta said Permiso will bring its large research base to the deal, drawing on thousands of identity-related detection signals across dozens of partner integrations to flag issues like excessive permissions, unused access, and unusual behaviour from AI agents. Once its capabilities are folded into Okta's platform, they will give security teams a unified view of identity risk from human employees, service accounts, and autonomous AI agents, rather than requiring separate tools for each category. This deal also extends Okta's reach beyond core identity management into security operations. Okta said this will give broader visibility into how AI agents, running locally, in the cloud, or inside SaaS tools, behave. It will also incorporate a sandboxing system called SandyClaw, designed to test AI agent skills and prompts for supply-chain style attacks before they reach production. Okta chief product officer Ely Kahn said the acquisition is central to helping organisations secure what he called the "agentic enterprise," where humans, applications, and AI agents increasingly work side by side. "Everything we've built at Permiso has been driven by one goal: helping customers stay ahead of identity-based threats in an increasingly complex security landscape," Jason Martin, cofounder of Permiso, said in the post. The startup was founded by Martin and Paul Nguyen in 2020 and emerged from stealth mode two years later. Permiso has raised about $29 million to date, according to the report.

Okta To Acquire Permiso Security For Identity Threat Detection Expansion

The company is seeking to add capabilities in the fast-growing area of identity threat detection and response with the acquisition deal. Okta is seeking to add capabilities in the fast-growing area of identity threat detection and response (ITDR) with the announcement Thursday that it plans to acquire a startup in the segment, Permiso Security. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed by the end of October, were not disclosed by Okta. [Related: How AI Agents Are Making Identity Security More 'Critical' Than Ever: Partners] The acquisition is aimed at bringing Permiso's technology for detection and mitigation of identity threats -- across the full range of identities including human, non-human and agentic -- to the Okta identity security platform. In particular, Permiso's offering delivers key identity risk signals and behavioral analytics as well as functionality for advanced threat detection, Okta said in a news release. The plan to combine Permiso's technology with the Okta platform seeks to ultimately accelerate the surfacing of identity-driven risk, while enabling partners and customers to more easily address excessive privileges, according to Okta. Notably, the deal is also aimed at expanding Okta's platform "beyond identity management into the core Security Operations Center," the company said in the release. It's clear that long-standing gaps in identity security will increasingly see exploitation in cyberattacks going forward, including in attacks that are autonomously executed by AI agents, executives from Permiso told CRN in an interview earlier this year. Because nearly all attacks exploit identity and privileges in some way today, autonomous attacks will necessarily function the same way, said Jason Martin, co-founder and co-CEO at Permiso. Identities with excessive privileges are already a widespread problem, and companies that fail to address the issue will be leaving the door open for attackers to utilize the over-permissioned identities to enable attacks, Martin said. "It's very likely going to be catastrophic if people don't get identity under control," he said during the previous interview. Without a doubt, identity security is becoming an increasingly central component of AI strategies around the industry, according to Chris Konrad, vice president of global cyber at St. Louis-based World Wide Technology, No. 10 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 for 2026. The focus on identity is rising fast with the growing adoption of AI agents that are designed to access applications and data, requiring the extension of security measures around identities and permissions to agents, Konrad noted. When it comes to the push for agents, "identity is playing right in the heart of all of that," he said. "These agents need an identity. And they need the same governance, policies and controls around that [as humans]." The Okta-Permiso deal is the second major identity security acquisition to be announced this week. Data security startup Cyera announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Oasis Security, a specialist in non-human identity security, for $1 billion.

Okta Inks Permiso Purchase to Expand Identity Threat Defense | PYMNTS.com

The acquisition will add Permiso's identity risk signals, behavioral analytics and threat detections to Okta's platform, Okta said in a Thursday (July 30) press release. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of Okta's fiscal year 2027, according to the release. With the planned acquisition, Okta aims to further its effort to unify identity threat detection and identity posture management in one security offering. Upon the close of the transaction, Permiso's capabilities will provide Okta customers with advanced identity threat detection, enhanced visibility into agent behaviors, a dynamic sandbox for AI agent skills and prompts, and automated artificial intelligence identity response, per the release. Okta Chief Product Officer Ely Kahn said in the release that the company is working to secure agentic enterprises in which humans, applications, service accounts and AI agents work together. "Permiso will extend Okta's identity security fabric with proven identity threat detection and response capabilities, and an incredible threat research and security team that will advance Okta's threat detection and prevention capabilities," Kahn said. Permiso Co-Founder Jason Martin said in the release that joining Okta will mean that Permiso's work "reaches far more organizations than we could have on our own." Permiso Co-Founder Paul Nguyen said that the combination of the companies' capabilities will "help security teams gain deeper visibility into identity risks, respond faster to threats, and strengthen their overall security posture." The PYMNTS Intelligence report "How Enterprises Can Build a 'Know Your Agent' Defense: Digital Identity Verification in the Age of Bots" found that as digital commerce becomes increasingly automated, enterprises face the new identity challenge of distinguishing legitimate AI agents acting on behalf of customers from malicious bots. When announcing Okta's first quarter fiscal year 2027 financial results in May, Okta CEO and Co-Founder Todd McKinnon said that AI agents are joining workforces and creating a wave of identities that must be secured and governed. "We're expanding our opportunity as the world's leading independent and neutral identity provider and helping customers make identity the unified control plane for their secure agentic enterprise," McKinnon said at the time in an earnings release.