Okta, Inc.
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2009 to present
Todd McKinnon is the CEO of Okta, in the role since 2009.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Todd McKinnon | Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer | 2009 | Present | 17 |
| Frederic Kerrest | Co-Founder; former COO and Executive Vice Chairman | 2009 | 2023 | 14 |
Okta runs the login and access layer for thousands of organizations. Its workforce products let employees and contractors sign in once and reach the apps they are allowed to use, with MFA, automated account provisioning and access reviews. Its Auth0 customer identity platform gives developers ready-made login, registration and authorization for consumer and business apps. More than 20,000 organizations used Okta as of January 31, 2026, including 5,255 customers paying over $100,000 a year as of July 31, 2026. About 79% of Q2 FY2027 revenue came from the United States. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Okta was founded in 2009 in San Francisco, California, by former Salesforce executives Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest to pioneer cloud identity and access management (IAM), enabling enterprises to connect employees and customers securely to any application.
Okta makes money by selling term subscriptions to its cloud identity services. Workforce identity products such as Single Sign-On, Adaptive MFA, Universal Directory, Lifecycle Management, Okta Identity Governance and Privileged Access are generally priced per user per month and sold on annual or multi-year contracts. Customer identity, sold under the Auth0 brand, is priced mainly by monthly active users and feature tier, from a free developer plan up to custom enterprise contracts. In fiscal 2026, subscription revenue was $2.855 billion of $2.919 billion total; the remainder was professional services, which Okta is deliberately shifting to partners. Growth comes from landing new customers and upselling additional products, with a dollar-based net retention rate of 107% reported for the quarter ended July 31, 2026.
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
2009 – Present
17 years (current)
Bet on cloud identity in 2009, bought Auth0 for about $6.5 billion, launched the Secure Identity Commitment after the 2023 breach, and repositioned Okta around securing AI agents.
Has led Okta since founding, through its 2017 IPO, the 2021 Auth0 deal and its turn to GAAP profitability in fiscal 2025.
Co-Founder; former COO and Executive Vice Chairman
2009 – 2023
14 years
Kerrest executed the massive, highly strategic enterprise sales operations that convinced Fortune 500 CIOs to trust a tiny cloud startup with their most critical, sensitive corporate identity data.
As Co-Founder and Vice Chairman, he provided the absolutely essential business and sales acumen required to scale the company, perfectly complementing Todd McKinnon's technical expertise.
These officers report to the chief executive and are not part of the CEO timeline above.
Okta faces four main challenges. Microsoft bundles Entra ID into Microsoft 365 enterprise licences, which pressures pricing in Microsoft-heavy accounts. Security incidents, including the 2022 Lapsus$ intrusion via a support contractor and the October 2023 support-system breach, damaged trust and led to the Okta Secure Identity Commitment in 2024. Revenue growth slowed from more than 40% before fiscal 2023 to about 11-12% in fiscal 2026, so Okta must prove new products can re-accelerate it. Finally, AI agent identity is attracting well-funded competition from CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks (which bought CyberArk), Microsoft and startups.
Todd McKinnon is Okta's co-founder and CEO. Before Okta he worked at PeopleSoft and then at Salesforce, where he led engineering until leaving in 2009 to start Okta.
Todd McKinnon has been CEO since co-founding Okta in 2009, making him one of the longest-serving founder CEOs in enterprise software.
Frederic Kerrest co-founded Okta and served as COO and later executive vice chairman. He wrote "Zero to IPO" (2023) and has since stepped back from an operating role.
Brett Tighe is Okta's chief financial officer. He has overseen Okta's move to GAAP profitability, a 30% free cash flow margin in fiscal 2026 and the cash settlement of its 2026 convertible notes.
Ric Smith is Okta's president of products and technology, and Ely Kahn has been cited as chief product officer in coverage of the Permiso acquisition.
In April 2017, McKinnon led Okta through its initial public offering on NASDAQ at $17 per share, raising $187 million and establishing Okta as the first standalone enterprise cloud identity provider to go public.
Announced in 2024 after the October 2023 breach, the Okta Secure Identity Commitment is Okta's long-term program to harden its products and internal infrastructure, champion industry identity security standards and share threat intelligence.
McKinnon believes that every company in the world will ultimately migrate 100% of its IT infrastructure to specialized best-of-breed clouds; in this heterogeneous world, an independent identity layer is the central nervous system that enables secure digital transformation.
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