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The AI Identity Problem
Paul Querna·CTO, Co-founder C1·4 min
Learn why the rise of AI agents will cause a massive identity explosion—and why identity and access management systems must evolve to handle the scale, complexity, and automation demands that come with it.
Main Takeaways
- Traditional identity systems were built for a manageable number of long-lived human identities.
- AI agents come in three forms: company agents, personal productivity agents, and SaaS-embedded agents.
- Company agents may scale 1–2x your employee count; personal agents could number in the hundreds per person per year.
- SaaS-based agents will grow with the number of applications and integrations a company uses.
- This leads to identity counts that can grow from thousands to over 100,000, even in small-to-midsize businesses.
- Organizations must rethink identity governance to support short-lived, task-based, and high-volume AI identities.