I mean, "bombshell" was a little heavy of a club to use when I foreshadowed this, but it's…

I mean, "bombshell" was a little heavy of a club to use when I foreshadowed this, but it's derived from a question I had at the very start of my "journey" and still haven't found a smoldering crater yet...

Is Beijing-based "Authing" - which is a one-to-one "replacement" for U.S.-based Okta (and its subsidiary Auth0) - authenticating any U.S. data?

Let me be clear: I do not have the answer to this question in this thread, but with everything else stemming from Lionel Ni and Microsoft I've discovered, the clarity surrounding these companies' "best practices" gets even murkier...

🧵***THREAD***🧵

Okta, Auth0, and Authing

According to Crunchbase (which I am using for ease-of-use here, and is usually fairly accurate), Okta is a $1.2B San Francisco company, founded in 2009 by Frédéric Kerrest and Todd McKinnon.
https://t.co/I33nQyTQcE

Todd McKinnon (https://t.co/aJzVHfkJGo) had previously worked at Facebook, Salesforce, and Oracle. The MIT and Stanford graduate, Frédéric Kerrest (https://t.co/4VZuWxjW7h), looks to have worked at Salesforce with McKinnon for several years (2003-2007) before Kerrest and McKinnon founded Okta together in 2009.

2/

Auth0 was founded in Bellevue, Washington in 2013 by Eugenio Pace, Frederico Jack, and Matias Woloski.

Pace (https://t.co/KcofyNpoMA) was formerly a Principal Lead Program Manager at nearby Microsoft for well over a decade when they founded the company.

Since its founding, several notable investors include Silicon Valley Bank (Series A, 2015; Series B, 2016), Salesforce Ventures (Series F, 2020), and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) is led by David Cowan who also appears to have made his own investment around June of 2020 (https://t.co/IQplJZi94Y). Regardless, BVP has

Hans Tung, a Stanford graduate, joined GGV Capital in 2013 as a managing partner after several years with Bessemer Venture Partners, where he helped expand Skype in China (https://t.co/B1YEWdbJdp).

Authing is a Beijing-based data authenticator launched in June 2019 by several investment groups, including GGV Capital, Tiger Global Management, and China Growth Capital (https://t.co/BhXAS45XgE).

Some news I missed before, just in September 22, 2023, GGV finally separated its Chinese and American venture funds...in 2023...

>https://t.co/aJiizbfA0I

3/

Who is GGV Capital??

CNN reported (https://t.co/HAN3jfehIv):
"GGV Capital has approximately $9.2 billion in assets under management. The firm is known for backing tech companies around the world, such as Alibaba (BABA), Airbnb (ABNB), Slack, TikTok owner ByteDance and… https://t.co/mXELu9CeUi

4/

My BIGGEST question is - WHO IS TO SAY DATA ISN'T GOING BOTH PLACES...where it's supposed to go AND to Beijing?

I'll save the thread to explain why I even ask that question for later.

Did Lionel Ni invent the ALBERT Sensors' tech? Because I can point to a program in 1995.

5/

Auth0 was established with help from SVB, and remains a project of Bessemer Venture Partners, who is closely knit with the same backers of Beijing-based Authing.

Auth0 was purchased by Okta in 2021 for $6.5B.

Did Auth0 and Authing have any wires crossed before the 2021 acquisition? Are they still crossed? Maybe?

6/

Between 2013 and 2015, GGV Capital also invested $82M into AT&T CyberSecurity, who ironically was also funding multiple researchers at Michigan State University for that very research.
>https://t.co/8MCXE9Ozgu
>https://t.co/gTLirmIP0S
>https://t.co/mU9KX4es4b

So, again my question...

Did any wires get crossed? AND WOULD WE EVEN KNOW IF THEY DID?

7/

Raw info:

Alex X. Liu:
https://t.co/rJ9c59VLfE

Every research everything at MSU, ever.
(You'll have to copy the links in the article into archive to get them to work...MSU caught on...will fix late)
https://t.co/WcOl2FzojL

Ignore the VERY FIRST line. Hahahaha https://t.co/VhUPtevcD0