00:00You know, it was so interesting because, you know, at the end of the day, numbers are numbers
00:04and you had the confidence to raise on the outlook. There must be a reason why.
00:11You know, earlier in the show, we're talking with Databricks and Ali Godsey about
00:14how real is the deployment of agents. You must know the answer to that.
00:20Okta was founded in the shift to cloud computing. And this new shift we're in,
00:25the shift to AI and AI agents, is bigger than anything since the internet, possibly bigger.
00:30And so what Okta is benefiting from is all this change and all this technological evolution
00:34makes identity even more important than ever. All these applications, all these services,
00:39and then you layer on top of that a new product cycle for Okta. The new product cycle is Okta
00:43for AI agents.
00:44So we have a product that is the identity layer, the connectivity for all these AI agents in the
00:49enterprise. It's a powerful combination that's driving the business on all fronts.
00:53What makes your offering unique, different from other peers that are out there? Many want to be
00:57the governance rules, the protection layer for this. I think it may surprise you, but it's the focus.
01:02We're focusing on the connections, the connections between AI agents and all the databases and data
01:08sources and applications they need to be most effective. And that connectivity, that is very
01:14important to the functionality of the agents. But it's also something that's very risky from a
01:18security perspective. The more you connect to your agents, the more risk of information leaking,
01:23the agent going rogue, and you having to shut it down quickly. So that connectivity, and we have a
01:28blueprint for the industry to how to connect those agents securely, and that's really resonating with
01:32customers. Earlier this week, somebody called Jensen Wang went on stage and in front of a camera and
01:39said that the narrative around software is complete nonsense. And he made the argument that
01:47for legacy software agents will become the end users. And there are more agents than people in the world.
01:54And your stock, like everyone else's in your space, went absolutely bananas. Be honest with me,
02:01Todd. Is that helpful to have Jensen Wang weigh in like that? Or would you just wish you didn't?
02:07Well, if you zoom out and look what's happening, I mentioned earlier the transition to the cloud 15 years
02:13ago. The transition to AI is similar in that every layer of the stack is being reimagined and reinvented
02:18from the hardware layer to the infrastructure layer, to the platform layer, to the development
02:22tool layer, to the application layer. And so every vendor has an important priority to make sure they
02:29reinvent themselves with these agentic capabilities and these capabilities of automation. But this one is
02:34actually different. There's a new layer on top of all this. And this new layer, which is not, hasn't
02:39happened in previous generations of technology change, there's a new layer. And that's the layer
02:43of digital work. It's a whole new category, a whole new opportunity that everyone's going after,
02:48in addition to reinventing themselves in their own business. And that's, I talked about this two
02:52pronged drivers of our business. We have the reinvention and the reprioritization of identity
02:58and this new layer for automated digital work, which our Octafer AI agents is powering and playing right
03:04into. What does it mean for your own workforce, for your own human capital? Are you needing as much of
03:11it? I think they have to be more effective and more productive. And the tools are there to do
03:16that, whether it's cloud code or whether it's the latest marketing tool or support tool, they have
03:20to be more effective and they have to deliver value. But you'd keep the same amount of people working
03:24with Octa? Well, this is where I disagree with a lot of people. I think in five years, Octa is
03:28going to
03:28have far more software engineers that we have now. And you want them to be spending. You want them to
03:33be generating tokens. And that's because it's a little bit of a trick answer because the reason
03:38we'll have more is not because they won't be more efficient. It's because there's just so much more
03:42capability to build. There's so much demand for software and there's so much power of the
03:46automation. We're very excited about this. The Bloomberg Tech audience is in industry. It is
03:51sophisticated, but lots of people, this is so abstract still. The thing that I always get frustrated
03:56with an agent is that I just want it to act. So if you take this as a random case
04:01study,
04:01but like my flight gets canceled, I have to phone a human still, even within Bloomberg,
04:06try and get that resolved. But there is a world that you're pitching where they have access to
04:10my credit card, the flight information. It just happened. These are the connections I'm talking
04:14about, the connections to data that has to be secured. What is the barrier in the world right now?
04:19Corporate America, companies around the planet that just is preventing this just happening.
04:24The barrier is, people think about models and we herald model advancements. The reality is,
04:30is that the models are at a capability now far surpassing our ability to simply connect the
04:34systems together and get practical agentic applications built. But that's great because
04:39there's a lot of smart people in the world working on connecting them and we're focused on making sure
04:42they're connected securely. And that's why the future is very bright.
04:45That's what I meant though. Like, are we worried about how secure that potential transaction is or not?
04:51We have to be always worried about security. You're connecting sensitive data and automating it in
04:55new ways. And there's always risk in that. And that's why I think our solutions are resonating
04:59so much. It's this practical focus on, we want things to be more automated. We want these agents
05:03to have more capability. They need more data. How do we pragmatically do that in a secure and
05:08manageable way? And that's what Octa for AI agents does.
05:10And so this talk of SaaS-pocalypse.
05:13I think it's completely overblown. It's completely overblown. I think there will be
05:18SaaS companies that don't embed these capabilities in their offerings. Just like in the revolution
05:22and the move to the cloud, there were companies that were left behind and became legacy vendors
05:26and were just all bought up by Oracle. That'll happen too. But there will also be many vendors
05:31that make the transition and thrive in the future.
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