Quest Software, the Austin, Texas software company backed by private equity firm Clearlake Capital, announced on June 17, 2026 that it had acquired Anetac, a startup that monitors the access and privileges of human, non-human and AI-agent identities inside companies.
The price was not disclosed. Quest said the deal strengthens its identity security products for Microsoft environments by adding continuous visibility into who and what can access systems, how privileges are used and how access passes from one account to another.
Quest said it would combine Anetac's technology with its own products into a platform that helps organizations discover, understand, govern and secure identities. It did not say whether the Anetac name or its standalone product would continue.
What Anetac built
Anetac was founded in 2023 by a group of seven founders led by chief executive Tim Eades and came out of stealth in May 2024. Its first product focused on service accounts, the non-human accounts that applications and scripts use to talk to each other, which are often given broad privileges and then forgotten.
The platform gives security teams a real-time view of service accounts, tokens and API and access keys, and flags signs of attack. It maps access chains, analyzes account behavior automatically and highlights dormant accounts, credentials that are never rotated, excessive standing privileges and accounts shared between users. At launch the company said its customers included airlines, banks, colleges and critical infrastructure operators.
By the time of the sale, Anetac described its product as AI-powered identity security covering human, non-human and agentic identities. Quest said it extends identity discovery beyond directories to show identities, access chains and inherited privileges across hybrid and AI-driven environments.
“Identity security in the agentic AI era is one of the biggest risks enterprises face. By bringing Anetac’s innovative approach to non-human and agentic identity monitoring and security into Quest, we are able to take on this heightened challenge, helping customers gain full visibility and control over all identities across their environments.”
Why Quest is buying
Quest's argument is that AI agents are creating a new kind of identity risk that most security teams cannot see. The release said machine identities, including service accounts, APIs, bots and workloads, now outnumber human users by up to 82 to 1. Anetac discovers and classifies those identities and manages their lifecycle, which Quest said helps customers reduce risk, enforce least-privilege access and meet compliance requirements.
Quest chief executive Tim Page said bringing Anetac's approach to monitoring non-human and agentic identities into Quest would help customers gain visibility and control over every identity in their environments.
Clearlake partners Prashant Mehrotra and Paul Huber said identity was becoming one of the most important security layers in an AI-driven world and that the need for real-time behavioral intelligence and governance was growing.
Quest said customers of the combined platform should see better visibility into identities, a stronger security posture, faster compliance work and more resilience against identity-based attacks as their use of AI grows. The Clearlake partners said they believed Quest was well placed to address the problem and that Anetac's capabilities would help it offer differentiated identity security products to customers around the world.
The founders and the funding
Anetac announced $16 million in funding when it emerged from stealth in May 2024. The round was led by Liberty Global, with participation from Shield Capital, GP Ventures, Eades himself and security executive Jason Witty. Coverage of the acquisition did not report any later round.
At launch, Eades said it was staggering how poor security hygiene was among service accounts. The company was described at the time as a Silicon Valley startup building a platform for managing and securing non-human identities.
The buyer
Quest sells software for data management and governance, cybersecurity, including identity security, and platform modernization. It says more than 45,000 companies use its products, including more than 90% of the Fortune 500.
Clearlake, founded in 2006 and headquartered in Santa Monica, California, manages more than $185 billion in assets across private equity, credit, infrastructure and other strategies, and has 14 offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
