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Common Fate

Common Fate is an Australian identity-security startup giving cloud-native teams just-in-time, policy-as-code access to AWS and GCP via its open-source Granted CLI.

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43/100Emerging / Unranked

Overview

Common Fate builds identity and access security for cloud-native engineering teams. Its platform provides just-in-time, time-bound privileged access to AWS and GCP production accounts, row-level database access control, Terraform-based policy-as-code, and an “Identity Risk Index” assessment, with optional bring-your-own-cloud deployment so customer data never leaves the customer’s own cloud account.

The Sydney, Australia-based company was founded by former cybersecurity and cloud-platform consultants and is best known in developer circles for Granted, its open-source, MIT-licensed CLI tool for securely switching between AWS roles and accounts from the terminal — a project that has become a de facto standard for teams managing multiple AWS accounts and is still being actively maintained. The commercial platform grew out of that open-source work. Common Fate raised a $3.1 million seed round led by Work Bench, with Haystack and Essence VC participating.

Its differentiation is building a commercial access-governance product on top of a genuinely adopted open-source developer tool, rather than selling a closed platform from day one — a bottom-up, developer-trust model similar to HashiCorp’s early playbook. The company is small and has not disclosed funding or named enterprise customers publicly since its seed round, so real-world scale remains unverified.

Innovation Matrix Assessment

Innovation Velocity 6/10

Sustained, multi-year development of both an actively-maintained open-source CLI (Granted, still shipping releases) and a commercial platform built on the same access model.

Operational Value 6/10

Just-in-time, policy-as-code access to cloud production accounts and databases addresses a concrete, everyday cloud-security operational need for DevOps and security teams.

Market Momentum 3/10

Only a $3.1M seed disclosed, no named paying customers found, and funding/press activity appears to have gone quiet after the initial raise — honest momentum score for a very early company.

Category Disruption 3/10

Cloud access governance is a crowded space with better-capitalized competitors; Common Fate's open-source-led approach is a smart wedge, not a category redefinition.

Real-World Efficacy 3/10

No independent reviews, named customer evidence, or analyst coverage found; open-source tool adoption is a positive signal but not independently quantified here.

Enduring Relevance 5/10

Cloud privileged-access governance is a durable need, and an open-source distribution strategy gives some resilience, but the company's longevity is unproven.

Why CISOs Should Care

Lets security teams eliminate standing cloud credentials and enforce time-bound, auditable access without slowing down engineers, using a tool many engineers already trust.

What Makes It Different

Grew out of, and still ships, a widely-used open-source AWS access CLI (Granted) rather than launching as a closed commercial product from the start.

The Matrix Verdict

43/100 — EMERGING / UNRANKED

Emerging/Unranked: a credible, developer-trusted approach to cloud access governance, but public evidence of paying-customer traction is too thin to place it higher yet.

Editorial Note: Claims vs. Verified Findings

Claims about broad Granted adoption ("many companies have standardized on it") are vendor-stated; no independent download/usage figures were found to verify the scale of adoption.

Sources