In this episode of the VMblog Expert Interview Series, VMblog’s David Marshall sits down with Jeff Kukowski, CEO of Ory — one of the world’s most widely adopted open-source customer identity and access management (CIAM) platforms — to unpack what’s driving explosive growth in the identity space and why the rise of agentic AI is forcing enterprises to rethink their entire approach to identity management.

With over 40,000 active open-source projects, more than 375 enterprise customers, and over 2.5 billion identities under management, Ory is seeing firsthand how the identity landscape is being reshaped by AI agents, bots, and increasingly sophisticated threat actors.

In this interview, Jeff covers:

• What’s behind Ory’s recent growth surge — and why it reflects a broader market shift toward modern, composable identity infrastructure
• Why agentic AI is “front and center” in identity today — and why 50–60% of organizations with agents already in production don’t trust their existing identity solutions to keep up
• How Ory’s open-source projects like Hydra (OAuth 2.0/federation) and Keto (fine-grained permissions) are helping enterprises solve real-world agentic use cases right now — without ripping and replacing existing systems
• Why the pendulum is swinging back toward self-managed and open-source identity — and what’s driving that shift
• The evolving phishing threat landscape and why converged credentials remain the most reliable defense against account takeover
• Why Jeff warns enterprises not to “vibe code” authentication or cryptography — and what the risks of over-relying on LLMs look like in practice
• The role of modern infrastructure partners like CockroachDB in delivering the resilience, compliance, and scale that agentic workloads demand
• Jeff’s 12–24 month crystal ball for the identity industry — including good bot vs. bad bot, observability, delegated permissions, and why owning your own identity stack is becoming a competitive advantage

Whether you’re a CISO, architect, developer, or enterprise technology leader, this conversation delivers sharp, practical insight into where identity is headed and what you need to do to stay ahead of the curve.

Learn more about Ory: https://www.ory.com/