Securing the Future of Non-Human Identity
Defakto is redefining how the world secures modern autonomous infrastructure from workloads to AI agents and everything in between. We’re building the identity platform that secures 90% of enterprise interactions, the ones between machines, not humans.
Our Mission
A new identity layer for a new era
Modern enterprises run on non-human identities. Every API call, workload deployment, and AI agent requires authentication. While companies have 10,000 employees, they have millions of non-human identities. Most are secured with static secrets that never rotate.
Defakto was founded to change that.
Our mission is to eliminate secrets and secure every automated interaction across pipelines, services, and AI agents with dynamic, cryptographic identities.
Our Story
Born from a real-world gap.
Built for the future.
Defakto was founded by Eli Nesterov and Danny Oliveri to solve one of the most urgent and overlooked challenges in enterprise security: non-human identity.
Eli experienced the NHI problem firsthand at ByteDance, managing identity across hyperscale infrastructure. Open-source solutions promised to eliminate secrets but required years of complex implementation, making enterprise adoption impossible.
Danny saw the market opportunity to build what enterprises actually needed: a product-grade platform that delivers the security vision of open standards with the usability required for real-world adoption.
Together, they founded Defakto with a bold vision:
”To do for non-human identity what human IAM has done for people: deliver secure, governed, and dynamic identity and access at scale.”
What started as a deep technical insight has grown into an enterprise-ready platform trusted by some of the world’s largest organizations. Defakto is redefining how infrastructure is secured in a world where non-human identities outnumber humans 45:1.
Leadership team
Danny Oliveri
Cofounder & CEO
Eli Nesterov
Cofounder & CTO
Heather Howland
SVP, Marketing
Shawn Munoz
VP, Customer Solutions
Backed by the best in security and enterprise tech
Defakto is proud to be backed by top-tier investors who share our vision for securing the future of identity.
Join Us
Help build the security layer the future runs on
We’re creating the platform that gives every workload its own managed identity. This is foundational infrastructure that every enterprise will need.
We’re engineers, designers, and builders who move with urgency, take ownership, and care deeply about our customers. No corporate bureaucracy, just smart people building something essential.
If you want to solve one of security’s hardest problems and build something every enterprise will need, this is your opportunity.