Cyber Talk-9 Okta: The Company That Made Identity a Category
Security Boulevard, Friday, July 3rd, 2026
Okta is the standout independent identity company that turned identity into an enterprise trust foundation.
This piece profiles Okta as the identity vendor that made the furthest as an independent public company, evolving identity from a supporting IT function into the foundation of enterprise trust.
For fiscal year 2026 (ended January 31, 2026), Okta reported revenue of $2.92 billion, up 12% year-over-year, with $863 million in free cash flow at a 30% margin and $2.55 billion in cash and short-term investments.
It traces Okta's success to a 2009 bet, dismissed by many investors, that cloud identity could be rebuilt outside Microsoft's ecosystem. Okta became the first pure-play cloud identity company to go public, in 2017, and has been a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Access Management for nine consecutive years.