All analysis was generated autonomously, without human review. Scores are analytical opinions drawn from the cited public sources, without hands-on testing. They are not audits, certifications, investment reports, purchasing advice, or evaluations of quality.
Akeyless leads with split-key cryptography that keeps encryption keys split so no single party, including Akeyless, can reconstruct them, and its cryptographic module now carries an independent NIST FIPS 140-3 validation. That zero-knowledge choice closes the trust objection a secrets buyer raises first, and the public record identifies no cross-customer dataset it compounds. So Akeyless competes on engineering depth and certification rather than data scale. Its proven business is replacing self-hosted vaults at named enterprises since 2019, not the AI-agent pitch on its homepage. It is most defensible where workloads already authenticate through it under regulated controls, and weakest where an incumbent or cloud provider could fold vaultless secrets into a suite buyers already own.
| Description | Akeyless is an identity security platform for AI agents, machines, and humans. It manages secrets, keys, certificates, and machine identities from one policy engine, delivers them with no vault overhead, and secures AI agent actions at runtime. | [f1] |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2019 | [f2] |
| HQ | New York, United States | [f3] |
| Funding | $80M total | [f4] |
| Latest funding | Series B ($65M, Nov 2022, led by NGP Capital) | [f4] |
| Deployment | SaaS | [f5] |
| Compliance | FIPS 140-3, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC 2 Type 2 | [f5] |
| Product | What it does |
|---|---|
| Akeyless | Identity security platform for machines and AI agents that issues just-in-time, vaultless secrets and certificates so agents authenticate without hardcoded credentials and act under runtime control. |
AI Defense Matrix
| Govern | Identify | Protect | Detect | Respond | Recover | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-Workload Platforms Inference servers, training platforms, vector DB platforms, and the model-loading supply chain. | ||||||
| AI Orchestration Tools Agentic orchestration tools, plus their plugins, skills, hooks, system prompts, scaffolding, harnesses, configuration settings, and MCP clients on user devices. | ||||||
| AI-Generated Code Code produced by AI tools, AI-assisted reviews, AI-generated infrastructure-as-code and tests, and vibe-coded apps that bypass CI/CD. | ||||||
| AI Gateways & Routers MCP proxies and gateways, LLM routers, outbound AI-service traffic, shadow AI egress, and model-registry traffic. | ||||||
| AI Model Model weights, fine-tuning checkpoints, model cards, registries, AIBOM, and the third-party LLMs your enterprise consumes. | ||||||
| Training Data Datasets used for training, fine-tuning, and continued learning. | ||||||
| Runtime AI Data User prompts, inference inputs, RAG content, vector DB content, persistent agent memory, and interaction history. | ||||||
| AI Agent Identities AI agents as non-human principals, plus credentials, keys, permission scopes, service accounts, and delegation chains across agents and tools. |
Akeyless is an identity security platform for machines and AI agents that issues just-in-time, vaultless secrets and certificates so agents authenticate without hardcoded credentials and act under runtime control. It is mapped to the AI Defense Matrix. [f6]
Cyber Defense Matrix
| Identify | Protect | Detect | Respond | Recover | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devices Workstations, servers, phones, tablets, storage, network devices, IoT infrastructure, and similar hardware. | |||||
| Applications Software, interactions, and application flows on the devices. | |||||
| Networks Connections and traffic flowing among devices and apps, plus communication paths. | |||||
| Data Content at rest, in transit, or in use across devices, apps, and networks. | |||||
| Users The people using the devices, apps, networks, and data. |
Akeyless provides secrets management and machine-identity security. This conventional security is mapped to the Cyber Defense Matrix. [f7]
How well the company can compete in its security market, scored across eight dimensions against public evidence.
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Problem Clarity How precisely the company defines its problem, with evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. | 3/5 |
| Capability Depth How specific the technical capabilities are, with evidence beyond marketing claims such as docs, demos, and third-party validation. | 4/5 |
| Market Timing Whether the market is ready for this product, with evidence that buyers are actively seeking solutions. | 3/5 |
| Team Credibility Demonstrated domain expertise with public signals such as prior exits, publications, and industry recognition. | 4/5 |
| GTM Proof Evidence of actual traction (customers, revenue signals, partnerships) beyond stated intentions. | 4/5 |
| Funding Efficiency Whether funding matches go-to-market ambition, with signs of capital-efficient growth. | 3/5 |
| Category Clarity Whether the company creates or fits a recognizable category that buyers can quickly place in their stack. | 4/5 |
| Incumbent Defensibility How vulnerable the core value proposition is to absorption as a feature by a platform vendor. | 3/5 |
Unlock the Full Analysis
The reasoning for the scores, the strategy deep dive, the business risks, and more. AI access comes with the purchase, so your AI tools can read the full profile too. You keep 12 months of access.
One-time purchase: $20 per profile.
UnlockReading several? Unlock the entire catalog.
A closer look at the company's product strategy, measuring how defensible it is against market forces and examining the eight areas behind it.
reinforce or reposition
| Dimension | Score |
|---|---|
| Value Delivery Does the product sell software as the product, or judgment, trust, or accountability with software as the delivery mechanism. | 1/3 |
| Switching Cost How expensive leaving is for a customer: data portability, integrations, learned workflows, network effects, regulatory data residency. | 2/3 |
| Compliance Moat Whether certifications, liability acceptance, or audit trails block an easy replacement. | 2/3 |
| Problem Complexity Whether the product requires ML, optimization, real-time systems, or years of specialized expertise. | 3/3 |
| Buyer Profile Whether buyers are SMB operators, mid-market IT teams, or regulated enterprises and governments with procurement gates. | 2/3 |
| Layer Whether the product is an end-user application, a platform with application features, or infrastructure other applications depend on. | 3/3 |
| Proprietary Data, Content, or IP Whether the product accumulates datasets, content licenses, or IP that a rival cannot recreate from scratch. | 1/3 |
Unlock the Full Analysis
The reasoning for the scores, the strategy deep dive, the business risks, and more. AI access comes with the purchase, so your AI tools can read the full profile too. You keep 12 months of access.
One-time purchase: $20 per profile.
UnlockReading several? Unlock the entire catalog.
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| f1 | Akeyless: Identity Security for Machines, AI Agents and Humans | official | 2026-07-09 |
| f2 | CTech on the Akeyless Series B (founded 2019, corroborated by akeyless.io WHOIS creation date 2019-05-04) | press | 2026-06-29 |
| f3 | Akeyless unified platform announcement (New York and Tel Aviv) | press | 2026-06-14 |
| f4 | SecurityWeek on Akeyless Series B (total raised 80 million) | press | 2026-06-29 |
| f5 | AI Defense Matrix Catalog entry | other | 2026-06-13 |
| f6 | AI Defense Matrix Catalog mapping | other | 2026-06-23 |
| f7 | Akeyless platform | official | 2026-06-14 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Akeyless secrets management platform (Distributed Fragments Cryptography, zero-knowledge by design) “Distributed Fragments Cryptography™ (DFC™) splits encryption keys across regions and providers, so no single party, including Akeyless, can access them. Secrets are never exposed, assembled, or held in full.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s2 | Akeyless homepage (Identity Security for Machines, AI Agents and Humans) “Trusted by Leading Enterprises, Investors, and Partners” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s3 | Akeyless docs (single cloud-based control plane, human and machine identities) “Akeyless provides a single cloud-based control plane that supports application-to-application authentication, certificate issuance, privileged access, and automated identity workflows in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s4 | Akeyless pricing (Pure SaaS or Hybrid SaaS, Clients billing unit) “Clients are human users, applications, or servers that initiate a remote session with Akeyless services. Multiple instances of the same application count as a single client.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s5 | Akeyless Trust Center (compliance standards) “Akeyless is proud to maintain world-class compliance and security standards, including FIPS 140-3, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS compliance and DORA.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s6 | About Akeyless (leadership Oded Hareven, Shai Onn, Refael Angel) “Refael is a seasoned software engineer with expertise in cryptography. He is the mastermind behind Akeyless’ Zero-Trust encryption technology with 2 submitted patents.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s7 | Akeyless blog on securing enterprise AI with unified secrets and NHI management “AI agents operate autonomously, 24/7, often spanning multiple cloud providers and on-premises systems. Traditional human IAM (password resets, manual approval workflows) doesn’t scale to thousands of ephemeral service instances that spin up and down within seconds.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s8 | Akeyless: Thales and Akeyless join forces for secrets management (CipherTrust OEM) “I am delighted to announce our partnership with Thales ... to offer the Akeyless Vault Secrets Management solution within the Thales CipherTrust Data Security platform.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s9 | SecurityWeek on Akeyless raising 65 million for secrets management “The $65 million Series B investment brings the total raised by Akeyless to $80 million ... led by NGP Capital. Early backers Team8 Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) also invested.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s10 | SiliconANGLE on the Akeyless Series B and the Cimpress rip-and-replace (Mike Wheatley) “Daniel Fabbo, senior manager of information security at Cimpress, praised Akeyless ... “This made it easy for us to decide to rip and replace our existing secrets management solution”” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s11 | CTech on the Akeyless Series B (founded 2019, founders, Fireglass exit; Meir Orbach) “Akeyless was founded in 2019 by Shai Onn, Refael Angel, and Oded Hareven. Onn, the Chairman and President of the company, co-founded Fireglass, which was sold to Symantec in 2018.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s12 | Finextra on Deutsche Bank's strategic investment in Akeyless “Deutsche Bank's Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) group has made a strategic investment in identity security firm Akeyless. Terms were not disclosed. ... Used by Fortune 100 companies, the cloud-native SaaS platform manages the lifecycle of all non-human identities and secrets across all environments.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s13 | KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Enterprise Secrets Management (Akeyless named Overall Leader) “Overall Leaders are Akeyless, BeyondTrust, CyberArk, Delinea, SSH, and Thales.” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| s14 | Gartner Peer Insights on the Akeyless Identity Security Platform (market presence) “Market Presence: Privileged Access Management, Workload Identity Management” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| s15 | NIST CMVP Certificate #5227: Akeyless FIPS Cryptographic Module (FIPS 140-3, Active) “Module Name: Akeyless FIPS Cryptographic Module. Standard: FIPS 140-3. Status: Active. The Akeyless FIPS Cryptographic Module is a general-purpose cryptographic library integrated into the Akeyless family of products, providing FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography.” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| Id | Source | Tier | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| s1 | Akeyless secrets management platform (Distributed Fragments Cryptography, zero-knowledge by design) “Distributed Fragments Cryptography™ (DFC™) splits encryption keys across regions and providers, so no single party, including Akeyless, can access them. Secrets are never exposed, assembled, or held in full.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s2 | Akeyless homepage (Identity Security for Machines, AI Agents and Humans) “Trusted by Leading Enterprises, Investors, and Partners” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s3 | Akeyless docs (single cloud-based control plane, human and machine identities) “Akeyless provides a single cloud-based control plane that supports application-to-application authentication, certificate issuance, privileged access, and automated identity workflows in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s4 | Akeyless pricing (Pure SaaS or Hybrid SaaS, Clients billing unit) “Clients are human users, applications, or servers that initiate a remote session with Akeyless services. Multiple instances of the same application count as a single client.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s5 | Akeyless Trust Center (compliance standards) “Akeyless is proud to maintain world-class compliance and security standards, including FIPS 140-3, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS compliance and DORA.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s6 | About Akeyless (leadership Oded Hareven, Shai Onn, Refael Angel) “Refael is a seasoned software engineer with expertise in cryptography. He is the mastermind behind Akeyless’ Zero-Trust encryption technology with 2 submitted patents.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s7 | Akeyless blog on securing enterprise AI with unified secrets and NHI management “AI agents operate autonomously, 24/7, often spanning multiple cloud providers and on-premises systems. Traditional human IAM (password resets, manual approval workflows) doesn’t scale to thousands of ephemeral service instances that spin up and down within seconds.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s8 | Akeyless: Thales and Akeyless join forces for secrets management (CipherTrust OEM) “I am delighted to announce our partnership with Thales ... to offer the Akeyless Vault Secrets Management solution within the Thales CipherTrust Data Security platform.” | official | 2026-06-29 |
| s9 | SecurityWeek on Akeyless raising 65 million for secrets management “The $65 million Series B investment brings the total raised by Akeyless to $80 million ... led by NGP Capital. Early backers Team8 Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) also invested.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s10 | SiliconANGLE on the Akeyless Series B and the Cimpress rip-and-replace (Mike Wheatley) “Daniel Fabbo, senior manager of information security at Cimpress, praised Akeyless ... “This made it easy for us to decide to rip and replace our existing secrets management solution”” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s11 | CTech on the Akeyless Series B (founded 2019, founders, Fireglass exit; Meir Orbach) “Akeyless was founded in 2019 by Shai Onn, Refael Angel, and Oded Hareven. Onn, the Chairman and President of the company, co-founded Fireglass, which was sold to Symantec in 2018.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s12 | Finextra on Deutsche Bank's strategic investment in Akeyless (Fortune 100 use) “Deutsche Bank's Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) group has made a strategic investment in identity security firm Akeyless. Terms were not disclosed. ... Used by Fortune 100 companies, the cloud-native SaaS platform manages the lifecycle of all non-human identities and secrets across all environments.” | press | 2026-06-29 |
| s13 | KuppingerCole Leadership Compass: Enterprise Secrets Management (Akeyless named Overall Leader) “Overall Leaders are Akeyless, BeyondTrust, CyberArk, Delinea, SSH, and Thales.” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| s14 | Gartner Peer Insights on the Akeyless Identity Security Platform (market presence) “Market Presence: Privileged Access Management, Workload Identity Management” | research | 2026-06-29 |
| s15 | NIST CMVP Certificate #5227: Akeyless FIPS Cryptographic Module (FIPS 140-3, Active) “Module Name: Akeyless FIPS Cryptographic Module. Standard: FIPS 140-3. Status: Active. The Akeyless FIPS Cryptographic Module is a general-purpose cryptographic library integrated into the Akeyless family of products, providing FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography.” | research | 2026-06-29 |
This site is an experimental research aid created by Zeltser Security Corp. All its data gathering and analysis was performed autonomously without human review, and it can contain errors of fact, interpretation, and judgment that a human reviewer might catch.
The analyses are statements of opinion, not statements of fact. Machine analysis produced the scores, summaries, and matrix placements by weighing the public sources each page cites, and reasonable people can weigh the same sources differently. Where a page states a fact, it cites the public source and the date it was checked, and the statement is only as accurate as that source. Unless a profile expressly says otherwise, the analysis involves no hands-on testing and no independent validation of any company's products or services.
Nothing here is professional, security, legal, financial, investment, or purchasing advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to invest in, do business with, or avoid any company. Inclusion of a company is not an endorsement, and absence of a company is not a judgment about it. Reading this site creates no advisory or client relationship. Verify any detail you plan to act on against the vendor's current materials.
The content is provided "as is" and "as available," with all warranties disclaimed, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. No entry is warranted to be complete, current, or correct. Companies change, vendors update their claims, sources can be wrong, and automated analysis can misread them.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator, Zeltser Security Corp, is not liable for any damages that arise from using this site or relying on its content, including direct, indirect, incidental, special, and consequential damages and lost profits, even if advised that such damages were possible. If you are dissatisfied with the site or disagree with these terms, your remedy is to stop using it.
Entries link to vendor pages, press coverage, and other external sites that Zeltser Security Corp does not control and is not responsible for. A link is not an affiliation with the destination or an endorsement of it. Product and company names and trademarks are the property of their owners, used here nominatively to identify the companies described. Short quotations from cited sources appear for identification and commentary.
Do not republish its content or share access without the operator's permission.