Introducing the ConductorOne Academy

The AI Identity Problem

4 min

Speaker: Paul Querna CTO, Co-founder ConductorOne

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.