Okta in the AI stack

The business and what the filings show

Okta sells identity and access management: the service that decides who can log in to which application, for a company’s workforce and for its customers. Over its latest four quarters it reported $3.1B of revenue, +11% on the year before, the fifth-lowest growth rate in the software layer, at a 78% gross margin and an 8% operating margin, with free cash flow of $979M, 32% of revenue, and remaining performance obligations of $4.9B.

Its 10-K sees AI agents as a potential long-term opportunity: “a unified, independent control plane for non-human identities (‘NHIs’) and AI agents”, identities that need authenticated access to sensitive resources at a scale and speed beyond what security designed for people was built for. It also says adoption is at an early stage.

Okta is therefore a test of whether AI agents create a new market for identity software or whether the clouds and larger security vendors absorb it. Every agent that acts for a company needs credentials and permissions, which is Okta’s business; the question is whether customers buy that from an independent vendor. Its growth against the layer, and any revenue it starts to attribute to agent identity, will show which.

How AI shows up in the numbers

AI shows up at Okta mostly as a prospect: agents and other non-human identities that would need managing alongside people. Its filings describe the opportunity but do not yet quantify it, so the read is whether growth reaccelerates and whether its earnings releases start putting numbers on agent identity.

For scale, Okta’s revenue over the latest four quarters equals 1% of the $566B the five largest buyers spent on capital projects over their latest four quarters. Their capex rose +81% on the year before, while Okta’s revenue grew +11%: slower than the spending, so it is capturing a smaller share of each new capex dollar, or more of its business sits outside the build-out.

How it talks about AI

In its latest earnings release, furnished to the SEC on August 26, 2026, Okta mentioned AI 1 times in 1,881 words of narrative text, about 0.5 mentions per 1,000 words. Of its 1 sentences about AI, 0 included a number: a revenue figure, a growth rate, a customer count or another measurable result. Across the 8 releases we read, back to December 3, 2024, AI mentions per 1,000 words went from 0.0 to 0.5.

Specific claims are easier to check against the numbers than general enthusiasm, which is why the share of AI sentences that carry a figure is worth watching alongside how often AI is mentioned. The sentences below are quoted from the release as published, after removing safe-harbor text and company boilerplate.

• “As AI agents transform every layer of technology, every agent needs a trusted identity and clear controls over what it can access and do," said Todd McKinnon, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Okta.”

Source: earnings release (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1), August 26, 2026.

The trend in the numbers

Since the start of 2023, Okta’s largest quarter by revenue was Q2 2026 at $805M, and its highest gross margin was 80% in Q2 2026. The latest quarter set the revenue record for the period.

Quarter by quarter, Okta’s revenue grew +12% in Q3 2025, +12% in Q4 2025, +11% in Q1 2026, +11% in Q2 2026 on the same quarter a year earlier. The pace has been steady.

Gross margin in the latest quarter was 80%, against 77% a year earlier, so it is keeping more of each dollar as it grows. Operating margin moved from 6% to 13% over the same span. Over the latest four quarters it turned 32% of its revenue into operating cash flow and spent 0% of revenue on capital projects, against 0% a year earlier.

Where it sits in the stack

Okta sits in the software and applications layer of the AI stack. It sits at the top of the stack, where revenue from end customers has to come from; its own spending flows to AI clouds.

Among the 27 companies in this layer on our map, it ranks number 17 by revenue and number 23 of 27 by revenue growth. Its gross margin of 78% compares with 78% for the layer as a whole, close to the layer average. The full layer analysis is on the software page.

Latest four quarters for 10-Q filers; latest fiscal year for 20-F filers. Companies under $100 million of revenue are left out.

Against the 27 US-listed companies in its layer, Okta grew +11% over the latest year versus +19% for the layer combined, and converted 32% of revenue into free cash flow versus 33% for the layer. It is growing more slowly than its layer, so its share of the layer’s revenue is shrinking.

What has to go right, and what could go wrong

What has to go right. AI agents have to multiply inside companies, each needing managed identity and access, and customers have to want that managed by an independent vendor across all their clouds and applications.

What could go wrong. If Microsoft, the clouds or security platforms manage agent identities as part of what they already sell, Okta could miss the AI opportunity it describes while its core market matures.

These describe the conditions the business depends on, as the filings show them. They are not a view on the stock.

Through the lens of Investing in AI

Rob May’s book offers six mental models for telling AI moats from traps. The one most useful for Okta’s layer is “AI challenges traditional SaaS assumptions”: Per-seat pricing, zero marginal cost, smooth ARR curves, and automatic land-and-expand break down when software does work on your behalf. The mistake is not using SaaS instincts. It is using them automatically.

The question it asks of any company is: What work is this product actually doing, and how does pricing map to it? Applied to Okta, the filings on this page are the place to start: the margin trend shows whether it holds scarce value or passes it through, the customer and financing disclosures show who it depends on, and the commitments show what it has promised before the revenue arrives.

Customers and concentration

US companies must disclose any customer that accounts for 10% or more of revenue, and foreign filers usually describe their largest customers. Concentration matters because a company’s growth is only as durable as the handful of buyers behind it, and in the AI stack those buyers are often the same few companies.

• “For the periods presented, there were no customers that represented more than 10% of the Company’s accounts receivable balance or total revenue.” 10-K, March 5, 2026

Commitments and backlog

• Backlog. Okta reports $4.9B of remaining performance obligations, 1.6 times its revenue over the latest four quarters: contracted revenue not yet earned.

What to watch

Okta’s next quarterly report will cover the quarter ending around October 30, 2026. Large companies must file a 10-Q within 40 days of a quarter’s end and a 10-K within 60 days of the fiscal year’s end, so the new figures should arrive by about December 29, 2026 at the latest. This page, the layer pages and the next quarterly report all update from that filing.

• Revenue growth against the layer: reacceleration would be the first sign agent identity is adding revenue.
• Any figures on non-human or agent identities in its releases.
• Free cash flow margin, which shows how profitably it runs at its current growth rate.
• Its place in the next quarterly AI Stack Report, which updates every company on the map from the new filings.

Figures from Okta’s SEC filings, latest period ended July 31, 2026. Other companies: all company pages.