Omada buys EmpowerID to govern AI agents in real time

Omada has acquired US-based identity software company EmpowerID, expanding its work in governance for AI agents.

The deal adds EmpowerID's software for managing and authorising AI agents during live activity to Omada's identity governance and administration platform. The combined offering is intended to cover human users, software applications, workloads and AI agents under a single governance framework.

The move comes as companies face a growing number of software agents operating inside business systems with limited oversight. Many existing access control models were built for human employees and do not address systems that make decisions and take actions automatically at machine speed.

Under the combined approach, organisations will be able to set permissions for AI agents in real time and revoke or restrict access when an agent moves beyond approved boundaries. The system is designed to bring together identity records, entitlements and relationships across connected systems into a single view to support governance, authorisation and risk assessment.

The acquisition also advances Omada's recent focus on AI agent oversight. The company had already announced an Agent Governance product, and the purchase of EmpowerID adds discovery of AI agents, ownership and lifecycle management, certification of access rights and runtime control within one platform.

Leadership change

As part of the transaction, EmpowerID Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Patrick Parker will join Omada as Chief Innovation Officer. He will oversee product development related to next-generation identity security and the integration of EmpowerID's technology into Omada's platform.

Jakob H. Kraglund, Chief Executive Officer of Omada, said: "AI agents are already acting inside enterprise systems faster than most security teams can track. This acquisition means we can tell customers not just what their agents have access to, but we can also stop those agents the moment they step outside the lines - in real time, not after the fact. That's the difference between governing AI and just monitoring it."

Identity governance software has traditionally focused on defining who should have access to systems and data, reviewing those permissions periodically and documenting compliance. The growing use of autonomous software agents has created a different challenge, as these systems may request access and execute tasks continuously rather than on a predictable timetable.

The combined platform is designed to make access decisions at the moment a request is made, using live governance and risk context. That means a change made during a review process can affect the next request rather than waiting for the next scheduled synchronisation.

Market focus

The platform is also intended to maintain records of access grants, decisions and reviews as they happen, creating compliance evidence during day-to-day operations rather than assembling it later for audits. For large organisations with mixed human and machine identities, this is becoming increasingly important as internal software estates grow more complex.

Parker said the rationale for the deal was the need to manage all identities through a single model. "We built EmpowerID to govern identity as one platform that manages every human and AI agent and proves in real time what each one is allowed to do. With Omada, we continue building on that foundation and bring it to enterprises at a scale we could not reach alone. It's what the AI era demands, and together we can deliver it faster than anyone."

Industry analysts have been watching how identity software vendors respond to the spread of AI agents in enterprise technology environments. The issue is not only whether an agent has been granted access, but whether it continues to act within policy while interacting with sensitive systems and data.

Martin Kuppinger, Distinguished Analyst & Co-Founder of KuppingerCole Analysts, said: "AI agents act at machine speed, and governing them after the fact is not enough. With EmpowerID, Omada adds runtime authorization and security for AI agents to its IGA foundation, extending governance from who is entitled to access to what agents are actually permitted to do, as they do it."

Stephens advised Omada and its shareholders on the transaction.