Okta Ventures and the Future of Identity

Last April during Oktane19, our annual customer conference, we launched Okta Ventures — a $50 million investment fund for the growing ecosystem of startups tackling issues like identity, security, and privacy. We also announced our first investment in Trusted Key, a blockchain-based digital identity company (recently acquired by Workday).

We’re committed to working closely with the companies we invest in to collaboratively shape the future of identity. Since the launch, we’ve been busy with two additional investments in companies that align with our vision of enabling any organization to use any technology.

Identity and IoT

Our second investment, announced on June 20, was in Ockam, a company empowering developers to create IoT systems they can trust. Developers use Ockam to interconnect secure hardware with software services and facilitate the trustful exchange of information within connected systems.

Ockam’s founders share our fundamental belief that trust begins with identity. As every part of our lives is now impacted by innovation in technology, it’s crucial that technology seamlessly and securely connects. We believe Ockam will provide tremendous value to our current and future customers as they extend identity to secure the devices of the future.

About the investment, Ockam CEO and founder, Matthew Gregory said: “Since the very earliest days of Ockam, we’ve consistently coalesced a community that shares our vision of a seamless connected world, with trust at the center. Okta shares our belief that integrations and partnerships are essential to building trust across the technology ecosystem, and we’re excited to have their support and expertise as we build the next generation of secure identity solutions.”

Identity and corporate compliance

Our most recent investment, announced yesterday, was in DataGrail, a data privacy platform. DataGrail integrates with leading applications and infrastructure solutions (i.e., Okta, Adobe, Salesforce, AWS, etc.), and offers its customers continuous compliance for current and forthcoming privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and Nevada's SB-220.

Companies are relying on more and more cloud apps, while consumers are demanding increased privacy. DataGrail fills an important void for companies seeking a solution to help them remain compliant, and will offer our customers the unique ability to take a 360 degree approach to ensuring data privacy.

“As we continue to evolve with the shifting identity industry, we look forward to working closely with the Okta team to further our partnership and enable any company to securely use any technology," said Daniel Barber, CEO and co-founder of DataGrail.

We are thrilled to work with innovative companies shaping the future of identity and offering new value to our current and future customers. We look forward to working closely with the Ockam and DataGrail leadership teams, as well as future portfolio companies, to nurture the cutting edge technologies solving critical challenges across the modern technology landscape.

To learn more about Okta Ventures, visit our Okta Ventures page.