Danish identity governance provider Omada Identity has acquired EmpowerID, a specialist in AI agent governance. The deal is intended to add real-time controls for AI agents to Omada’s existing identity governance and administration platform.
Omada Identity, a provider of identity governance and administration (IGA) software, has announced the acquisition of EmpowerID, a company focused on AI agent governance. According to the company, the deal adds EmpowerID’s runtime agent governance capabilities to Omada’s platform, extending access controls to human, non-human and agent-based identities alike.
Omada frames the acquisition as a response to the growing number of autonomous software agents operating inside enterprises. These agents make decisions independently, access sensitive systems and carry out tasks at high frequency, often without clear visibility into what they are actually permitted to do. Access controls built for human employees, the company argues, were not designed for agents operating at machine speed.
The combined Omada-EmpowerID platform is intended to let organizations define in real time what a given agent is allowed to do, and stop it the moment it exceeds those boundaries rather than discovering the issue during a later audit. The acquisition follows Omada’s announcement of an agent governance offering in June.
The company lists five areas the integration is meant to strengthen: governance across every identity type through shared lifecycle, access and certification services; a continuously updated, unified view of identities, entitlements and relationships across connected systems; runtime authorization decisions made at the moment of request rather than during periodic synchronization; agent governance spanning discovery, ownership, certification and runtime control within the existing identity fabric; and continuous compliance evidence generated as grants, decisions and reviews occur.
Omada CEO Jakob H. Kraglund said, according to the company statement, that AI agents are already acting inside enterprise systems faster than most security teams can track. He said the acquisition allows Omada to tell customers not only what their agents can access, but to stop them the moment they cross defined boundaries, in real time rather than after the fact.
Patrick Parker, co-founder and outgoing CEO of EmpowerID, is moving to Omada as Chief Innovation Officer, where he is expected to lead integration of EmpowerID’s agent governance technology and further development in identity security. Parker said EmpowerID was built to govern identity through a single platform covering both people and AI agents, and that working with Omada allows that approach to reach enterprises at a scale the company could not achieve alone.
Martin Kuppinger, Distinguished Analyst and co-founder of KuppingerCole Analysts, said AI agents operate at machine speed, which makes after-the-fact oversight insufficient. With EmpowerID, he said, Omada extends its IGA foundation to cover authorization and security for AI agents, so governance addresses not only who gets access but what agents are allowed to do at the moment they act.
Investment bank Stephens advised Omada and its shareholders on the transaction, according to the company. Omada did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Omada Identity was founded in Denmark and offers an IGA platform for managing access across human, non-human and AI-based identities. According to the company, the platform is highly configurable, can be deployed in weeks rather than years, and is designed to reduce risk while producing audit-ready evidence. Customers can choose among several cloud and managed-infrastructure options and retain control over who can access their data.
Dr. Jakob Jung is Editor-in-Chief of Security Storage and Channel Germany. He has been working in IT journalism for more than 20 years. His career includes Computer Reseller News, Heise Resale, Informationweek, Techtarget (storage and data center) and ChannelBiz. He also freelances for numerous IT publications, including Computerwoche, Channelpartner, IT-Business, Storage-Insider and ZDnet. His main topics are channel, storage, security, data center, ERP and CRM.
Contact via Mail: jakob.jung@security-storage-und-channel-germany.de