The AI revolution is here and it's going to "pervade every industry, every company," Okta CEO Todd McKinnon tells Yahoo Finance Live after Okta (OKTA) unveiled it's latest AI offerings at its Oktane conference this week. McKinnon also discussed how the business has changed over time, saying that customers used to want things like making it easier for employees to log in. Now however, customers are more interested in security, given the shift to the cloud. To hear what McKinnon has to say about the recent cyberattack against Clorox (CLX), watch the video above.
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Video Transcript
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BRIAN SOZZI: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance live on this Friday afternoon. So much focus on AI and the speed in which companies are rolling out AI. And now, a lot of companies are looking to protect their platforms into 2024 as this new technology rolls out.
Of course, who better to talk to than Todd McKinnon? Co-founder and CEO of Okta. Todd, good to see you. I know you're fresh off your 11th annual Oktane event where you rolled out a bunch of new products. What exactly did you bring to market here and what are your goals with some of these new products?
TODD MCKINNON: It's great to be here on Yahoo Finance, Brian. Thanks for having me. Oktane '23 was all about Okta AI. Okta AI is AI capabilities infused across our entire product portfolio. It makes several of our existing products more valuable and more powerful for customers, and also makes entirely new products possible.
So we were able to talk with customers and partners and connect with them, and really talk about this next wave of technology, which is the AI wave of technology, the AI revolution. And it's going to pervade every industry, every company. We used to say that every company is a technology company. Now, every company needs to be an AI company, and we're helping them with Okta AI.
BRIAN SOZZI: We've been talking all day long, Todd, about what's happening over there on Clorox. And I would argue, they're really not an AI company. They sell bleach. But if you are a company right now rolling out new AI initiatives, is it almost next to impossible to protect your platform from people who might be trying to hack you from their mom's basement?
TODD MCKINNON: Well, the attackers are coming after everyone. And every organization, every company, every government system is under attack. And that's because we've-- as an industry, we've done so well at digitizing so much information, and making processes online, and connecting more closely with our business partners and consumers.
And that all has tremendous benefits for the world, but it also has-- the downside is that it raises the risks and the value that an attacker can gain by compromising the system. So it's up to the industry to adapt and build better capabilities. As the threat actors get more sophisticated, the industry has to get more sophisticated.
And now, this whole new AI revolution is going to be more capabilities, like we talked about Okta AI across our platform of products. But the threat actors can use this technology too. So you really need this ecosystem, you need this ecosystem of companies that are working together to protect all of your applications, and services, and infrastructure. And it can't be done by one company. It's got to be this collective ecosystem, which is something we're very focused on in our product strategy.
BRIAN SOZZI: It sounds like a pretty scary future. I mean, AI, of course, lots of potential there, but you're raising the risk of potential hacks. What's your pipeline of business? A lot of these new tools, of course, you rolled out today. But what's the customer appetite to give you money so they get access to these new tools?
TODD MCKINNON: How it's really evolved over the last few years is very interesting. Five years ago, when we would have had this conversation, identity was a conversation about employee enablement. Make it easier to log on to systems or maybe make it easier to roll out a new service, or application, or cloud infrastructure. Or it was about building a new website and building it faster.
Now, it's much more of a security-focused conversation. I think what's happened is that with the firewall being less important in the security conversation and with people working remotely and more people adopting cloud technology faster, it's very clear that identity is at the center of this all.
And if you want to have a comprehensive and strong security posture across your employee base, and your partners, and your extended ecosystem, and your customers, you have to have a solid identity platform at the center of that. In fact, when I talk to CEOs and boards of directors now, this is a board level conversation. How can we get our cyber house in order? And then how do we do that by picking the right identity partner?
BRIAN SOZZI: Big jobs report, Todd, 336,000 jobs created on the headline. Does it feel like to you that type of strong economy? And do you have visibility into how your business could fare next year? Does it feel as strong as some of these numbers we've been talking about today?
TODD MCKINNON: So the the-- our business is driven by these long-term secular trends I mentioned, the need for more cyber and identity being at the center of that, cloud transformation. AI as the next technical wave and identity is going to be more important ever in the future.
When you get down to the specific economic anecdotes and inputs, we see in our business, a couple of things are clear. One is that companies are having higher scrutiny on their spend than they did three years ago. Three years ago, it was zero interest rates, people were buying everything.
And for the last 18 months or so, companies, CEOs are trying to do more with less there. 84% of CEOs think there's going to be a US recession. So whether or not there will be in this jobs report is further evidence that the economy is likely going to grow this year.
And you can talk about the recession or not, but a lot of people think there's going to be recession, which means they're being more scrutinous in their spending. They're expecting more ROI from their investments. And I think luckily for us, identity is passing that bar. So it's not only those-- as companies get more scrutinous on spending, they're still investing, especially larger companies are investing in their identity projects.
BRIAN SOZZI: Like any company, Todd, the road to success is never a straight line. And we've talked in the past about your challenges along the way, your company's challenges with the salesforce or integrating an acquisition that you made a couple of years ago. But at this point, does it feel like to you, from the from the lens of a co-founder, that you have your mojo back internally?
TODD MCKINNON: I think one of the things about being a founder is that you got to realize that you have to keep your own mojo no matter what's going on in the industry or in the company. You got to lead the company and drive it forward with a lot of positivity and a lot of energy. So I always think we have our mojo.
I think if you look in the company now and you look in the customers and especially at an event like Oktane that we just finished up, the buzz around the partners and the customers-- we had you know over 4,000 people in-person person a few times that online, taking in this message and realizing that this AI future is very promising and very-- there's a lot of great things that are to come out of it, if we have a good technology stack to take advantage of it and we balance the some of the risks we talked about with the tremendous opportunity. And it feels really good.
BRIAN SOZZI: Well we'll leave it there. Okta CEO Tom McKinnon. Always great to get some time with you. Have a great rest of the week. I know it's been a busy week.