Okta Says It Will Acquire Workflow Automation Startup for $52.5 Million
Okta, an identity-focused tech firm, said while reporting earnings Thursday that it plans to acquire Azuqua, a workflow automation startup based in Seattle, for $52.5 million in cash.
Todd McKinnon, Okta’s chief executive, told Fortune the acquisition would not be material to revenues for the quarter, but that the acquisition “will have a huge impact over time.” He said the technology “is going to take our existing product and supercharge it.”
Okta reported revenues of $399 million for its 2019 fiscal year, up 56% year-over-year. The company has yet to turn a profit.
Azuqua’s technology helps integrate data recorded in disparate databases across customers’ backend systems. Okta plans to use it to synchronize employee identities across customers’ workplace applications, such as those for human resources and payroll.
McKinnon said Okta would continue to support Azuqua’s customers as the technology gets added, over the next six-to-12 months, to Okta’s “lifecycle management” product, which handles employee on-boarding and off-boarding. He said the tech could potentially extend beyond Okta’s workplace-focused business to handle consumer identities, a part of the business that has been growing since Okta’s acquisition of another startup, Stormpath, in 2017.
Azuqua was founded in 2013 by former Microsoft employees, including chief product officer and former CEO Nikhil Hasija. The startup had raised a little over $16 million in total at a post-money valuation of about $72 million, per data from venture capital industry tracker Pitchbook; it had last raised funding with Insight Venture Partners as the lead investor two years ago.
Azuqua’s founding chief technology officer, Craig Unger, also a Microsoft alumnus, left in the fall to start a new venture, HyperProof, for automating workplace compliance.
Azuqua competed with the likes of Mulesoft, a company acquired by Salesforce for $6.5 billion last year. Other businesses with products that rival Azuqua’s include IBM, Microsoft, Tibco, SnapLogic, and Zapier.
“Strategically, we’re pretty excited about where this positions us next to Microsoft and Salesforce,” McKinnon said.
