ServiceNow Sets Sights on Veza for Identity Security Push

ServiceNow has reached agreement to acquire Veza, a cloud-native identity-security startup, for more than $1 billion. The deal brings under ServiceNow’s umbrella Veza’s “Access Graph”, a technology designed to map and manage permissions across human users, machines and AI agents — giving enterprises clearer visibility over who can access what data and perform what actions. ServiceNow said the acquisition will fold Veza’s identity management features into its broader AI and security platform, aiming to provide unified control over data access and automated workflows under one roof.

Veza, founded in 2020, gained attention for addressing what security leaders call the non-human identity problem — enterprises increasingly deploy AI agents, service accounts and automated workflows that act like users, yet traditional identity-governance tools treat them as afterthoughts. Veza’s Graph architecture aggregates identities across on-premises systems, SaaS apps, cloud platforms and databases, enabling organisations to enforce least-privilege access consistently. The startup’s own materials describe the platform as capable of answering the core question: “who can take what action on what data,” across all identity types.

For enterprises looking to scale AI and automation, governance and compliance remain pressing concerns. ServiceNow’s integration of Veza aims to offer a centralised “control tower” — one that not only tracks identity and access risks but can also automate remediation or policy enforcement when anomalous permissions are detected. According to ServiceNow, this will enhance capabilities across vulnerability response, incident management, integrated risk oversight and identity-access governance.

The announcement follows ServiceNow’s earlier acquisitions this year, including a major move to acquire an AI-assistant firm, signalling a strategic shift from IT-service management to building a comprehensive AI-centric enterprise platform. Analysts suggest this identity-security deal could help ServiceNow differentiate itself against rivals such as Microsoft and Salesforce — especially among organisations cautious about deploying fleets of AI agents without robust access controls.

Customers of Veza span high-profile enterprises across industries; its approach has drawn interest from firms grappling with cloud-native architectures, hybrid environments and sprawling permission sets. By embedding Veza within its existing offerings, ServiceNow could accelerate adoption of identity-aware automation and reduce risk exposure tied to unmanaged machine or agent identities.