The news: Victoria-based holding company Tiny announced on Wednesday that it paid $1.9 million CAD to acquire the assets of New York-based Oso Cloud, which makes authorization management software that helps businesses track access controls for humans and AI agents.
Members of the Oso Cloud team, including co-founder and CEO Graham Neray, have joined US-based open-source software development platform Temporal Technologies. Tiny CFO Mike McKenna told BetaKit in an interview that a “small but dedicated team” is staying on to continue growing the business under Tiny’s ownership.
From the source: In an interview, Tiny CFO Mike McKenna said the deal was a “prime opportunity to have a real strong impact in the environment” of AI agent security, as it becomes broadly more important for companies.
“Controlling access to sensitive data and critical systems is fundamental to how large enterprises operate securely, especially as new applications and AI tools reshape how work gets done,” Tiny CEO Austin Singhera said in a release.
The context: Founded by Andrew Wilkinson and Chris Sparling, Tiny is a publicly traded firm that buys up mostly digital companies to hold for the long term. Its stock price has fallen sharply since its pandemic-era high of $236, and it is now trading at around $6 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
In a release, Tiny said Oso had roughly $5.3 million in annualized recurring revenue (ARR) and would bring the firm’s ARR to more than $75 million on a pro forma basis.
Final thought: While Tiny has a broad array of companies in its portfolio, from film-review app Letterboxd (which it’s reportedly shopping around) to DJ software maker Serano, Oso appears to be the first that tackles enterprise software security. In the era of rogue AI agents and increasing AI adoption, demand appears set to grow for software tracking the identities and activities of these bots.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Michael Fousert.