Okta Is Creating the Trust Layer for the Agent Economy

Mason Nystrom sits down with Gareth Davies, Chief Product Officer at Okta, to explore how identity is becoming the most critical primitive in the agentic economy and why Okta's partnership with World ID is the foundation that makes trusted agent commerce possible.

Without a trust layer that binds agents to verified humans, commerce breaks down, fraud proliferates, and the full potential of the agentic economy cannot be unlocked.

Key Topics:

• The agentic landscape today: real scaled applications and agentic experiences are being built, but identity and security are foundational blockers
• Binding agents to humans: why trust is lost the moment you cannot verify that an agent is working on behalf of a real, verified individual
• The proliferation of agents: there are now more agents than humans, and the 
• World ID as the trust credential: how a verified human identity can be transacted and bound to an agent so downstream service providers can trust who is calling their APIs
• Why trust unlocks commerce: when you can trust, new product experiences and B2B commerce models become possible that simply cannot exist without it
• Auth0 for AI agents: a suite of tools to help developers manage the full agent life cycle
• The economic value of verified identity: as agents take over more aspects of labor, knowing a human is behind them becomes increasingly valuable

The views expressed in the podcast are those of the individual personnel quoted and are not the views of Pantera Capital Partners LP or its affiliates ("Pantera"). The podcast is provided for informational purposes only to provide market commentary and for general educational purposes, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. The podcast is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest. Please see additional important disclosures related to the content discussed in the podcast here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If we think about AI as just you know the analogy of a race car, it's an incredibly powerful technology. But the fastest way around a track is to have really powerful brakes. And so we think about identity as not just the kill switch, but the brakes that make sure that that AI has trusted guardrails. So the implications are really tremendous, but we've got to get this foundation of trust right.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

We have an amazing next guest for you as part of our World Series. We have Gareth Davis, the CPO of Okta. Gareth, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. Great to be here. Awesome. I'm really excited, chat. So I think uh you've spent a lot of time looking at the agentic landscape as it relates to the importance of verification. Maybe uh help our listeners understand like what is your current view on the agentic landscape today as it relates to Okta?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

So it's a really exciting time. I think, you know, I spend every day speaking with some of the world's largest organizations. And whether it's on the workforce side of Okta or on the customer identity side of Auth Zero, there's tremendous innovation happening. People are building real scaled applications and agentic experiences. But what we're learning is that identity and security is foundational. If we can't bind an agent to a human and trust that it's working on behalf of a verified individual, then trust is lost and introduces friction throughout the whole life cycle. So it's really critical that we could understand where are my agents, what can they access, and how do we mitigate the risk of fraud and abuse so that agents can actually take action on behalf of humans, get things done in innovative ways, but for having you know full trust and life cycle understanding of the agent is essential.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

And as we move to this new paradigm where agents are doing actions on behalf of humans, how does that change what Okta needs in verification and identity? And maybe how does that play into the partnership with world that that you're leveraging?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

So we're seeing really interesting patterns emerge. I mean, Okta's been in the business of really validating and verifying that real users can access resources for well over a decade. And we've done that both in the workforce and on the customer side. And now with agents, that we're just seeing a proliferation. There's many more agents than there are humans. And I think about you know, me as a consumer, my health data is loaded into Gemini or ChatGPT. I'm using it for deep financial analysis. I really have to trust that agent. And when it goes out and takes action in the world, whether it's buying concert tickets or maybe interacting with a medical professional, it's critical that that agent could be trusted. And it only works on my behalf. And so we've been working really hard to invest in the technology and the capabilities to help developers and their organizations build these secure uh agentic applications. And it started with binding an agent identity to a human, but now we're seeing agents operate on behalf of teams and organizations and even operate autonomously and on their own behalf, spinning up swarms of other agents. And so, really, a whole new trust and security architecture is needed to unlock all of this innovation. And I think with World ID, the idea that we can get a verified human identity, a credential that could be transacted and used to bind to my agent means that those downstream service providers can really trust that the agents that are calling their APIs and interacting with their services are not just real agents, but they're operating on behalf of a of a real person.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Right. And as we maybe uh you know see agents take over more aspects of labor, really expand, like you know, what a what they can do on a human's behalf, that in a way makes knowing that an agent is backed by a human or verified by a human a little more valuable. How do you think about kind of the the economic relationship between that verification?

SPEAKER_00 3:43

So I think it's first off, it's essential. All talking about economics, but all markets operate basically on trust. And to be able to have trusted entities is essential for everyone to work together. So I think the most critical piece, if we think about AI, is just you know the analogy of a race car. It's an incredibly powerful technology, but the fastest way around a track is to have really powerful brakes. And so we think about identity as not just the kill switch, but the brakes that make sure that that AI has trusted guardrails. And when you can trust, then commerce can happen and new ways and new product experiences can be exposed. But I think we'll have unprecedented opportunity to make our lives better as individuals that will transform B2B commerce and how you know traditional SaaS and software gets bought and sold and used. So the implications are really tremendous. Uh, but we've got to get this foundation of trust right.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Definitely. And as you think about this foundation of trust, how does that maybe change uh you know the way you think about identity or the way Okta thinks about identity and and what is important to get right? And how does that impact the the future of identity?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Uh it's a great question. I think the first critical takeaway is that identity is no longer simply a human domain. We now need to understand the context of agents operating as principles, as first class identities. And on the Out Zero side, we build uh Aut Zero for AI agents, a suite of tools to help developers manage that full agent lifecycle. And on the Okta side, we have the Okta for AI agents offering to be able to have a single control plane to be able to govern really every element of a of an agent within the workforce. And so we think having those capabilities are essential so that new experiences can be can be built and ultimately people can access the technology that they need and do that safer.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Well, I think that's incredibly well said.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Thank you for joining. Thank you so much.