Agents Turn Auth Into Build vs Buy
Reed McGinley-Stempel, CEO of Stytch, on authentication for AI agents
Agent adoption turns authentication from a settled buy decision into a fresh build versus buy decision, because thousands of SaaS products now need to act like Google does in OAuth. They need consent screens, scoped permissions, revocation, and audit logs so Claude, ChatGPT, and other agents can read and write on a user’s behalf. That work used to matter for a narrow slice of platforms. Now it is becoming table stakes for ordinary apps that want distribution through agent clients.
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The product wedge is unusually modular. Stytch positions Connected Apps as a way to become an OAuth 2.0 identity provider in about an hour, without replacing the rest of an app’s login stack. That matters because most companies do not want a full auth migration just to launch an MCP server or expose one agent workflow.
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This expands the market beyond classic customer login. Consumer apps that never needed role based access control now need to separate what a human can do from what that human’s agent can do, with some actions approved instantly and others gated by confirmation flows like email or push. That pulls authorization and audit features downstream into much more software.
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The competitive split is getting clearer. Clerk wins on fast UI components for startups, WorkOS wins on enterprise add ons like SSO and SCIM, and Auth0 remains the safe incumbent. Agent identity opens a new lane for broader platforms that can plug into existing systems quickly, especially as MCP auth stays close to OAuth rather than becoming a totally new stack.
The next phase is that every important SaaS product becomes both an app and an identity surface for agents. As that happens, the winners in authentication will be the vendors that shorten time to launch, hide protocol churn, and let companies add delegated access without ripping out existing login systems. That is why the in house market has become newly valuable.