CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Akeyless vs Valence

Akeyless is an Identity Security Platform for securing machine, AI agent, and human identities across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments. Valence sells a platform that discovers and protects human, non-human, and AI agent identities across endpoint, cloud, and SaaS. CISO Tribune files both under Non-human identity security. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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Up to four companies side by side.

  • Akeyless
  • Valence
Akeyless vs Valence: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
AkeylessAkeyless is an Identity Security Platform for securing machine, AI agent, and human identities across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.akeyless.ioValenceValence sells a platform that discovers and protects human, non-human, and AI agent identities across endpoint, cloud, and SaaS.valencesecurity.com
What it sells
  • SecretlessAI®[4]Brokers just-in-time access without exposing credentials to the agent.
  • Agentic Runtime Authority[4][6][10]Controls and audits runtime agent access to supported Dynamic Secrets.
  • SaaS Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)Monitors identity activity across SaaS to detect threats.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Privately held[3]Not stated on its pages
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • October 26, 2026Akeyless announced its first inclusion in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management.[11]
  • March 31, 2026Akeyless announced Agentic Runtime Authority, a runtime control capability for AI agents, and Agentic Identity Intelligence, extending its AI Agent Identity Security solution.[10]
Not stated on its pages
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[3]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 4, 2026[4]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
Akeyless describes a clientele that ranges from startups to multinational corporations. Akeyless is designed for cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid and on-prem environments, with a SaaS control plane and customer-deployed Gateways. Akeyless provides deployment guidance for organizations that deploy Gateway on cloud-managed compute platforms.From its own pages, Valence sells mainly to security teams that need to discover, protect, and detect and respond to threats across their SaaS and AI ecosystem. Valence also addresses SaaS admins, who work with security teams on a unified view of SaaS and AI risks. Valence works with business users to understand and address risks they configured. Valence offers a route for organizations that want to develop integrations for proprietary or highly specialized SaaS apps. Valence says its platform helps find and fix risks across mission-critical SaaS applications.
Last verified
October 7, 2026November 2, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Akeyless and Valence are both filed under Non-human identity security.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Akeyless's primary category is Non-human identity security; Valence's is SaaS security posture.
  • Akeyless is also filed under Privileged access management, Machine identity and PKI and Encryption, tokenization and key management. Valence is also filed under Identity threat detection and response.
  • Akeyless lists SecretlessAI® and Agentic Runtime Authority. Valence lists SaaS Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR).
  • Akeyless is privately held.

What it sells: Akeyless

What SecretlessAI® does[4]
SecretlessAI® brokers just-in-time access without exposing credentials to the agent. Akeyless keeps credentials out of AI agents and governs their access to enterprise systems.
What Agentic Runtime Authority does[4][6][10]
Agentic Runtime Authority controls and audits runtime agent access to supported Dynamic Secrets. Agentic Runtime Authority evaluates and enforces what agents are allowed to do at runtime. Akeyless tracks every agent session from prompt to action.

What it sells: Valence

What SaaS Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) does
Valence delivers identity threat detection and response across a SaaS ecosystem. Valence monitors activity across users, service accounts, tokens, and integrations to identify suspicious access patterns, privilege abuse, and signs of compromise. Valence correlates events across applications to uncover threats that are difficult to detect in isolation.

Questions about Akeyless and Valence

What do Akeyless and Valence sell?
Akeyless sells SecretlessAI® and Agentic Runtime Authority. Valence sells SaaS Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR).
Are Akeyless and Valence in the same category?
They share Non-human identity security. Akeyless's primary category is Non-human identity security and Valence's is SaaS security posture.
Who owns Akeyless and Valence?
Akeyless is privately held.
Who are Akeyless and Valence sold to?
Akeyless describes a clientele that ranges from startups to multinational corporations. From its own pages, Valence sells mainly to security teams that need to discover, protect, and detect and respond to threats across their SaaS and AI ecosystem.
What have Akeyless and Valence announced recently?
October 26, 2026: Akeyless announced its first inclusion in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management.

About Akeyless

Akeyless is an Identity Security Platform for securing machine, AI agent, and human identities across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments. Akeyless combines secrets management, Modern PAM, certificate lifecycle management, encryption and KMS, Multi-Vault Governance, and AI agent security in one platform. Akeyless manages secrets, keys, certificates and machine identities through a single policy engine, operational model and interface.[1][4][5]

Akeyless describes a situation in which AI agents, workloads and services now perform most system access, while security tools still assume a human behind the keyboard. Akeyless states that the result is secrets everywhere, standing privileges, and identities no one can fully track. Akeyless gives applications, workloads, automation and AI agents secure access to the resources they need without relying on long-lived credentials. Akeyless provides short-lived, identity-based access while centrally managing the secrets, certificates and keys that still need to exist across cloud, hybrid and on-prem environments.[4][5]

Akeyless includes enterprise secrets management, and the platform extends beyond storing and rotating secrets. Akeyless supports short-lived, identity-based access, privileged access, certificates, encryption keys, machine identities and AI agent security. Akeyless secures, stores and delivers secrets dynamically. Secretless access in Akeyless lets applications, workloads and other identities authenticate and access resources without storing long-lived credentials. Akeyless can issue short-lived, just-in-time credentials when access is required and automatically expire or revoke them afterward. Akeyless supports authentication and access for applications, workloads, services, automation and other non-human identities using methods including cloud identities, Kubernetes identities, certificates and SPIFFE/SPIRE. Akeyless centralizes and secures credentials, certificates and keys across the CI/CD pipeline.[1][4][5]

Akeyless provides multiple AI-focused capabilities across the identity security platform. Akeyless keeps credentials out of AI agents and governs their access to enterprise systems. SecretlessAI® brokers just-in-time access without exposing credentials to the agent. Agentic Runtime Authority evaluates and enforces what agents are allowed to do at runtime, and Akeyless states that every agent action is validated, scoped and enforced in session. Agentic Runtime Authority controls and audits runtime agent access to supported Dynamic Secrets. Akeyless tracks every agent session from prompt to action. Akeyless AI Insights enables natural-language interaction with Akeyless resources. Identity and Secrets Intelligence provides AI-related visibility and governance surfaces in the Console. Akeyless MCP Server integrates MCP clients and tools with Akeyless services.[4][5][6]

Akeyless automates certificate issuance, renewal and compliance, and offers automated certificate lifecycle monitoring. Akeyless centralizes visibility and policy across all vaults and environments, and provides centralized governance across distributed secrets vaults. Akeyless offers a browser plugin for creating and securing employee passwords. Akeyless centralizes and automates encryption, tokenization and key management, with centralized encryption and key management across cloud platforms. Akeyless offers customers control of their encryption keys and encrypted data.[4][5]

Akeyless uses patented Distributed Fragments Cryptography™ as the foundation of its Zero-Knowledge Architecture. Akeyless includes hybrid post-quantum encryption alongside patented Distributed Fragments Cryptography™. Akeyless is designed for cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments, with a SaaS control plane and customer-deployed Gateways for local access, policy enforcement, and cryptographic operations. Akeyless provides deployment guidance for organizations that deploy Gateway on cloud-managed compute platforms. Across EKS, AKS, GKE, and Azure Container Apps, the core Gateway model is consistent. Akeyless provides a command, eventForwarderUpdateServiceNow, that updates a service now event forwarder.[4][5][7][8]

Akeyless describes a clientele that ranges from startups to multinational corporations. Akeyless offers applications, workloads, automation and AI agents secure access to resources without long-lived credentials.[1][2][4][5][9]

Akeyless on the record

Sources

Akeyless full record

  1. [1]akeyless.ioAkeyless · akeyless.io · undated page, accessed October 7, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Press releaseAkeyless · akeyless.io · published September 10, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Akeyless Identity Security Platform Reviews & Product Details - G2G2 · undated page, accessed October 31, 2026 · Tier C
  4. [4]Akeyless DocumentationAkeyless · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Identity Security for Machines, AI Agents & Humans | AkeylessAkeyless · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Security With AkeylessAkeyless · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Cloud-Managed Kubernetes PlatformsAkeyless · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]/event-forwarder-update-servicenowAkeyless · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Customer JourneysAkeyless · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Akeyless Launches Runtime Authority for AI Agents, Introducing Intent-Aware Security for Autonomous Systems | AkeylessAkeyless · published March 31, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Akeyless Recognized in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Privileged Access ManagementPRNewswire · published October 26, 2026 · Tier A

Valence full record

  1. [1]valencesecurity.comValence · valencesecurity.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Israeli cybersecurity startup valence launches out of stealth with 7m in fundingValence · valencesecurity.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]SaaS Application Security Platform | ValenceValence · undated page, accessed October 29, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Valence Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed October 29, 2026 · Tier C
  5. [5]The Leader in SaaS and AI Security, Built for the Agentic Era | ValenceValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Comprehensive Microsoft 365 Security and Risk RemediationValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]SaaS Security Posture Management | ValenceValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM)Valence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) | ValenceValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Valence Connector Studio | Extend SaaS Security to Any ApplicationValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Remediate Your Slack Security Risks | ValenceValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]GitHub Security: Manage Risks with ValenceValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Google Workspace Security | Protect Your SaaS EnvironmentValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Salesforce Security | Protect Your SaaS EnvironmentValence Security · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A

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