Episode summary
Why Okta Wants 'Authentication to Disappear' | At Barron's
At Barron's
· · Hosts: Andy Serwer · Guests: Todd McKinnon
Summary
Okta CEO Todd McKinnon framed the company as an identity and authentication layer for the internet of work: software that securely connects employees and customers to apps, devices, and increasingly AI agents. He said the goal is to make authentication “disappear” through seamless methods like fingerprints and face ID, while still keeping access highly secure and configurable for each customer’s risk profile.
McKinnon argued that Okta’s edge is flexibility. Unlike platforms that bundle identity into their own ecosystems, Okta sells recurring cloud subscriptions and lets customers choose how to authenticate and where to run the service, including local-country deployments for data sovereignty. He said that flexibility matters more as cloud computing, remote work, and AI expand the number of systems and agents that need access.
On the financial side, McKinnon said Okta remains a profitable growth company with about $2.6 billion in revenue, about $700 million of cash flow last year, and a long-term TAM of $80 billion. He said analysts care most about whether new products can reaccelerate growth, noting that nearly 20% of quarterly bookings came from newer products, and that fiscal 2026 guidance is for just over 10% top-line growth and another year of GAAP net income.
Key takeaways
- McKinnon says Okta wants authentication to become seamless, with the user barely noticing it while security remains tight.
- He argues Okta’s main moat is flexibility, letting customers choose authentication methods, deployment locations, and assurance levels.
- McKinnon says Okta is a recurring subscription business with about $2.6 billion in revenue and about $700 million of cash flow last year.
- He says nearly 20% of quarterly bookings came from newer products, which investors should watch for growth reacceleration.
- McKinnon says AI agents expand Okta’s opportunity because those agents also need identity, permissions, and authentication.
Notable quotes
“We really want authentication to disappear. We want it to be seamless and but also at the same time have it be very secure”
“the key the name of the game in our business is is flexibility”
“We we try to be positive and say what do we allow our customers to do”
“we think the TAM for what we do is is $80 billion a year and we're about you got 26 2.6”
“nearly 20% of the bookings in the quarter were from these new products, emerging products”
How the episode opens
Hello everyone and welcome to At Barrens. I'm Andy Sirwer and welcome to our guest Todd McKinnon, CEO of Octa. Todd, how's it going?
It's going very well. Thanks for having me. Of course.
So talk to us about the core function of your company. What is that word? The core function is uh authentication.
Nice. And it's keeping our really it's keeping our customers secure. Our customers about 20,000 companies around the world, big names you've heard of like FedEx or OpenAI.
It's they have hard challenges. They have to make all of their people productive by letting them connect to all the tools they need to do their jobs, whether it's their email system or their collaboration system or more recently all their uh AI agentic applications they're trying to use. They have to connect those people to those resources.
securely. It's not only their employees, it's also their customers. They want their customers connecting to their websites and their mobile apps in a secure and uh predictable way.
And that's what we do. We're an infrastructure provider that makes the lives of our end users easy, employees or customers very easy. But we also the security teams and our customers love us because it's more secure and more manageable and helps them get the most out of their technology.
So what's the difference between authentication and double authentication? Well, and is that what you guys do, double or single or both? Well, it's it's it's mo the thing we really try to do is have uh you know, accurate authentication.
Okay. So, it's all about making sure the right person's going to the right resource. And there's a bunch of different ways to do that.
You can you can the most simplest way is you ask them a password.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- authentication
- cybersecurity
- sso
- cloud identity
- company strategy
Companies and tickers mentioned
- OKTA
- Okta
Watch the episode
Watch “Why Okta Wants 'Authentication to Disappear' | At Barron's” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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