Workday's $1.1 Billion Acquisition of Sana: A Strategic Move in AI-Driven HR and Finance Software

Workday to buy AI firm Sana for $1.1 billion as HR software deal-making heats up

Sept 16 (Reuters) - Workday (WDAY.O), opens new tab said on Tuesday it would buy AI firm Sana for about $1.1 billion, underscoring growing consolidation in the HR software sector while companies look to integrate the booming technology into their products in response to evolving customer demands. Just last month, private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Workday rival Dayforce (DAY.N), opens new tab for $12.3 billion. Paychex (PAYX.O), opens new tab also announced the acquisition of rival Paycor for $4.1 billion at the start of the year, while Automatic Data Processing purchased WorkForce Software for about $1.2 billion in 2024. Sana, founded in 2016, allows companies to create AI agents to help automate specific tasks. As a part of Workday, Sana will continue to develop such tools, the company said. Workday's customers rely on its single, cloud-based platform, which offers applications to manage key services such as recruitment, payroll, accounting and auditing. Under the latest deal, Workday's customers, including hiring managers, will be able to generate tailored dashboards and automate the entire performance review process, among other functions, with the help of Sana's tech. Workday's buyout of Sana follows its announcement last month to purchase Paradox to gain access to an AI-powered talent acquisition suite to help customers find, hire and onboard employees more efficiently. The latest transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2026, ending January 31. Allen & Company is the financial adviser to Workday. Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Workday to acquire AI firm Sana for $1.1 billion

Sept 16 (Reuters) - Workday (WDAY.O), opens new tab said on Tuesday it would acquire artificial intelligence firm Sana for about $1.1 billion, as the human resources software provider looks to drive demand by integrating AI capabilities into its products. The proposed transaction adds to a flurry of deal-making activities in the HR software sector, after private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Workday rival Dayforce (DAY.N), opens new tab for $12.3 billion last month. Shares of Workday were down about 1% in premarket trading. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2026, ending January 31. Allen & Company is the financial adviser to Workday. Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Workday CFO on why $1.1 billion Sana deal aligns with M&A strategy | Fortune

Good morning. In a year defined by strategic acquisitions, Workday is accelerating its transformation through big moves in the AI space. Workday, which offers an AI platform for finance and HR, announced on Tuesday a definitive agreement to acquire Swedish AI startup Sana for around $1.1 billion. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal 2026, follows two other strategic acquisitions, Paradox and Flowise, announced last month. I sat down with Zane Rowe, CFO of Workday (a CFO Daily sponsor) to discuss his perspective on the deal and the company's approach to M&A. Sana's proprietary technology, known for its intuitive user interface and foundational AI learning tools, aligns closely with Workday's offerings, he explained. This will now be paired with Paradox's conversational AI for frontline workers and Flowise's AI agent-building capabilities. Rowe said the acquisitions of Sana, Paradox, and Flowise reflect Workday's disciplined approach to M&A. "We keep a very high hurdle on talent, team, technology, and cultural fit, and it's really a paradigm that has to fit perfectly; and that's how we think about our M&A strategy," he noted. Past integrations, such as Hiredscore and Evisort (acquired in 2024), have performed strongly, and Workday expects Sana to deliver similar value, Rowe said. Much of the anticipated success comes from cultural fit, he added. "It's truly the integration plan and how the cultures can work together and how we can embrace that with the leaders of these companies coming into Workday," he said. "That, candidly, is the most exciting part for me -- to see these leaders still thrive within the company and do really great things." For Sana, joining Workday promises a larger, global stage and access to a user base of over 75 million people. The Fortune 500 company's latest announcements also highlight innovations beyond M&A, including Flex Credits -- giving Workday customers modular, usage-based access to AI tools -- and the launch of 15 new AI agents via its venture partner network. For example, on the finance side, "we have some very interesting agents to help look at the close process," Rowe said. As AI adoption grows, organizations will improve their ability to track and measure its business impact, he said. Workday continues to "bolster its Illuminate agent platform" with the acquisition of Sana, as well as a partnership with Microsoft to import agents built on the Azure AI Foundry into the platform, BofA Securities analysts wrote in a Tuesday note. The launch of the flex credit pricing model for Illuminate should enable Workday to capture upside from agent usage via a consumption model over time, according to analysts. BofA Securities has reiterated its Buy rating and $265 price target. Rowe also shared his thoughts on Workday entering its 20th year in business: "I'm fortunate to be part of an enterprise that works with people and numbers -- the two things you need in business, and the two things I'm most passionate about."

Workday Rising 2025 - does its acquisition of Sana mean Workday agrees SaaS is dead?

Workday's $1.1 billion acquisition of Sana, announced at the opening of last week's Rising conference, is the third AI startup acquisition by the enterprise applications vendor in the past month, and its fourth in the past year. Workday has been keen to emphasize that this latest deal is not just about enhancing Workday's Learning & Development (L&D) product offering -- although Sana will have a big impact here, too -- but will also play a huge role in its overall AI strategy. The phrase that Workday executives have been using over and over throughout Rising has been that Sana will form the basis of Workday becoming "the new front door to work." Not just in Workday's traditional realms of HCM and finance, but across all enterprise functions, and in particular across the entire body of enterprise knowledge and know-how. The underlying thesis is that AI completely upends the way that workers have used enterprise applications to get things done, sweeping away the conventional point-and-click interface to replace this with a conversational experience. In this new AI-led interface, the user just asks questions of an AI assistant or agent and it goes off and fetches an answer or completes an action, or some combination of the two. As Rob Enslin, who as President and Chief Commercial Officer at Workday was closely involved in the Sana acquisition, told diginomica's Jon Reed: Essentially, we looked at, how do we change this interface in Workday? Because this was the darling of Workday. People love our interface, right? But with AI everywhere, everything we do, every way we did it in the past, it's gone. I do not want to have a pull-down menu and try to figure out, you know, when bonuses get paid in [a] compensation [app]. I just want to ask the question, and the system should tell me. This sea-change in how workers interact with enterprise apps has been on the cards for some time. Back in 2017, I wrote about the switch to conversational interfaces and the implications for enterprise architectures: What makes this significant is that we can get a response from the application without ever having to leave the conversational layer -- and we can converse with multiple applications all from the same platform. Previously, we had to actually visit each individual application to find information or complete an action. But now all of that workflow can happen in the messaging layer -- and the underlying applications become 'headless' as those individual screens and command lines we had to use before now become redundant. The implication is that the traditional discrete applications we're used to would all retreat into the background, operating behind the scenes, while we the users simply converse with AI agents. At the time, it seemed like this change was just two to three years away, but in tech it always takes longer than you expect for changes of this magnitude to come to fruition. We all tend to underestimate just how much else needs to change in the architecture to make it all possible. I mapped out a concept of a Tierless Architecture that would be needed to enable this change, and in the intervening years many of the necessary elements have been taking shape -- in particular a move to a much more composable architectures and more flexible, granular APIs that make it easier to source the precise data or functionality that's needed to answer a question or complete an action. Workday's recent announcements and acquisitions -- not just Sana, which in a sense is just the UX icing on the entire tierless cake -- are all about building out everything else that's needed to complete the roadmap to reach this ultimate destination. One of the most important milestones on Workday's journey was the acquisition of Evisort a year ago. This brought into Workday the crucial capability of being able to handle unstructured data. This is the kind of data where generative AI really shines, because it shortcuts the previously very laborious process of making human knowledge computer-readable. Instead of having to manually tag the key data hidden away in paperwork, message threads and various other forms of unstructured content created by humans, generative AI -- provided it's given enough source material to properly contextualize the content -- is able to recognize and categorize that data automatically. Traditional enterprise applications, based on highly structured SQL databases, have never been good at handling this type of data, but with generative AI now able to add the necessary context, it puts a much broader dataset within reach. But just as important was a different mindset, a fresh view that wasn't encumbered by the historical baggage and assumptions that build up when things have been done a certain way for a number of years. Earlier this summer I spoke to Jerry Ting, Evisort's founding CEO and now also Head of Agentic AI at Workday, who spoke about some of the fundamental changes in how Workday builds and sells products that have been under way at the vendor. Ting isn't the sole architect of these changes, which are being led by Gerrit Kazmaier, President, Product and Technology, who came to Workday in March from Google Cloud, while Peter Bailis, formerly VP of Engineering at Google Cloud, joined as Chief Technology Officer in May. Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri is also closely involved, bringing his experience of breaking the mold of the previous generation of enterprise software when Workday launched its cloud-native offering 20 years ago. Ting told me that Bhusri wants to recapture that spirit of challenging the status quo: When I met with Aneel, he told me, 'Jerry, when Workday was 20 people, we thought just like you.' In Aneel's mind and his heart, this is his baby. He doesn't want us to become an old ERP system. He wants us to take the hill. I met with Aneel as a part of this role, and he asked me, 'Jerry, how do you bring that startup AI founder mindset to Workday?' The past month of acquisitions, along with other in-house development initiatives at Workday, have put further essential building blocks in place. The acquisition of Flowise brought vital low-code agent-building capabilities to the new Workday Build developer platform, which customers and partners can use to build and adapt AI-powered agents and applications. Alongside Build, a significant internal initiative was the creation of Data Cloud, which enables zero-copy access to external data for combination and analysis with data within Workday's own applications. Unifying the underlying data across previously separate application-centric tiers of data and logic is a necessary complement to the unifying conversational user interface of the Tierless Architecture concept that I mentioned previously. Also important is the introduction of consumption-based pricing, which as Ting explained to me, changes the business model to a mindset that's even more focused on delivering customer value than traditional SaaS. Last month's acquisition of Paradox brings a conversational experience to the recruitment process. It's also worth mentioning the acquisition of HiredScore earlier last year, which brought predictive AI analysis to the realm of recruitment and internal mobility. Moving to a skills-based talent strategy is another trend that dates back quite a few years, but this too is now accelerating due to advances in technology. It's one area where Sana's technology will have a big impact going forward, as Alan Gray, Senior Principal Functional Architect for Workday Learning, explained in a session at Rising last week: With AI, if we can continuously assess people, feed that back to the profile and then automatically update as you go forward, then you're in this real area of continuous improvement, continuous performance... Think of the future where we don't have courses and we don't have programs, we just have content, and based on the needs, the content is dynamically generated for you as an individual to meet your exact need. I think there's some in-between steps to get there. Again, we have some examples of that in terms of compiling learning pathways based on your catalogs and based on questioning and based on some profiling. But potentially that could be there in the future, and it means you could really rationalize or reduce the amount of time people spend taking unnecessary content, but now they have this targeted content, dynamically published. But Sana is even more important because what it does for learning is actually the same as any knowledge extraction, and therefore the technology is ripe to become the foundation for that "front door to work" that Workday executives have been portraying. As Shane Luke, Head of AI at Workday, told diginomica via email: By combining Sana's innovative AI-native capabilities with our vast data and contextual understanding, we will be able to deliver a truly intelligent and personalized experience for our customers, where AI agents proactively anticipate user needs, automate complex tasks, and fundamentally transform how people engage with their jobs. Rising returned to San Francisco this year as part of Workday's celebrations of its 20 years in existence, and the lessons of its rise to prominence at a time when the fundamentals of enterprise application architectures were in flux will not have been lost on Bhusri and others with long enough memories. SaaS vendors now themselves face an existential threat as they adapt to the advent of generative and agentic AI. It's not so much as case of the death of SaaS, because these products are built on a rich catalog of data and know-how, a system of knowledge that AI needs to provide context to its analysis, which means that they're not so easily replaced. But they do face a metamorphosis into a new form, and like the shift to cloud, it's a trsnsition that some vendors will complete in far better shape than others. Workday is taking big steps to ensure that in remains in the vanguard of that transition. The big change is a shift away from discrete applications with their own separate tiers of UX, logic and data to a unified user experience and an underlying unified data layer, with granular APIs and similar protocols connecting up the business logic. Workday aims to be a player here, too, with its Agent System of Record, which was bolstered last week by the ability to register and manage Microsoft agents. The speed at which Workday is moving is impressive, but there's still more to do. Jon Reed poses some key questions in his analysis of the past week at Rising, as well as Kazmaier's response to the 'SaaS is dead' line. On my side, I would like to see more of a teamwork element to the Workday vision, which so far still seems rooted in the enterprise and its relationship with individual workers rather than how those workers interact with each other. With agents rapidly changing the nature of everyone's work, how people collaborate to maintain oversight of everything the enterprise aims to achieve becomes even more important. To answer the question posed in the title of this article, I think that while many of the key foundations on which SaaS has been built will remain, we are approaching the end of the SaaS era and the beginning of the agentic era of enterprise IT. Workday's acquisition of Sana signals its belief that, while not rejecting those SaaS foundations, it's time to move on into this new era.

Workday to buy AI company Sana for $1.1bn

The acquisition will enable the organisation to extend its AI capabilities. US-based Enterprise software company Workday has announced plans to acquire AI platform Sana, in a deal valued at $1.1bn. By acquiring Sana, Workday aims to leverage the company's AI knowledge and further itself amid a landscape that is focused on AI innovation. "Sana's team, AI-native approach and beautiful design perfectly align with our vision to reimagine the future of work," said Gerrit Kazmaier, the president for product and technology at Workday. He added, "This will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalised, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace." Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Workday will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Sana for approximately $1.1 bn. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year in 2026. The acquisition comes amid a time in which organisations across the globe are racing to implement AI technologies to address and even assume the challenges that arise in the workplace. For example, in the past few months alone French technology services company Capgemini acquired US-based WNS to extend its AI reach. Aryza, a Dublin-based SaaS provider acquired conversational artificial intelligence provider Webio for an undisclosed sum and OpenAI said it was buying Io, an AI start-up founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and several former Apple engineers. Several governments too have unveiled broad spectrum plans to incorporate artificial intelligence into their national strategies, with a focus on business growth and improving the lives of citizens. But significant concerns have been raised about AI's potential to replace humans in the workforce, as agentic AI tech is further developed and topics of 'onboarding AI' become more mainstream. Forrester vp and principal analyst Craig Le Clair recently discussed the issue of 'AI employees', explaining that AI-led layoffs are not far off and that he would expect job descriptions for an AI agent to be a reality by 2027. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Workday acquires Sana Labs for $1.1B to upgrade agentic AI work experiences - SiliconANGLE

Workday acquires Sana Labs for $1.1B to upgrade agentic AI work experiences Human resources and finance software giant Workday Inc. today announced the acquisition of Sana Labs AB, an artificial intelligence company offering enterprise knowledge and employee training tools, for about $1.1 billion. Workday also announced new AI agents for HR, finance and industry use cases in its Illuminate platform alongside a new developer platform, including a low-code agent builder that will allow customers to deploy custom AI agents. Founded in 2016, Sana has focused on developing AI tools to enhance the knowledge and understanding of employees in enterprises. The company's main products include Sana Learn, a coaching and feedback tool featuring an AI tutor, and Sana Agents, AI-powered knowledge assistants that generate insights and content from enterprise data. "Sana's team, AI-native approach, and beautiful design perfectly align with our vision to reimagine the future of work," said Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology at Workday. "This will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalized, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace." Sana Learn will be used to complement Workday Learning by adding hyper-personalized skill building to Workday's already existing learning suite to help employees train faster. Sana Agents provide capabilities beyond traditional chatbots by adding the ability to automate repetitive knowledge tasks and act proactively on users' behalf. AI agents can streamline day-to-day work by completing mundane tasks such as scanning email for highlights and catching up on reports. According to Sana, its agents have led to increased time savings and productivity gains. For instance, an unnamed leading American manufacturer achieved up to 95% time savings, while a multinational industrial technology company experienced a 90% increase in productivity. In addition to today's acquisition news, Workday also announced new AI agents, including a Financial Close Agent and Case Agent, purpose-built for complex business processes like performance reviews, planning and assisting with financial use cases. The new agents are part of Workday Illuminate, Workday's AI platform. The company said the new agents are "purpose-built for work," embedded with their respective industry use cases and powered by deep insights into business data and context. The company's new HR agents are designed to help reduce the administrative burden associated with attracting, retaining and engaging talent. According to Workday, these agents will improve the employee experience and allow HR teams to concentrate on strategic initiatives by automating time-consuming processes. New agents include a Business Process Copilot that automates the setup of new business procedures to reduce manual effort, the aforementioned Case Agent that automates administrative tasks to reduce resolution times for employee needs, an Employee Sentiment Agent that analyzes employee feedback and a Performance Agent that tracks data from enterprise applications to streamline reviews and recommend actions. To assist finance teams, the company introduced agents specifically designed for reconciliation, testing and planning. These agents help business leaders adapt to changing situations with valuable analysis and improved decision-making capabilities. These new agents include a Cost and Profitability Agent that allows users to define allocation for costs and revenue based on natural language, a Financial Test Agent that tests financials to detect fraud and enable compliance and the Financial Close Agent that automates the finalization of accounting records to retain accurate financial statements. For use cases not covered by these agents and Workday's already existing AI agents, the company today announced Workday Build, a new developer platform that gives customers and partners the power to create and deploy their own AI-powered solutions. It includes Flowise Agent Builder, a low-code tool that makes building agents on the company's platform simple for both non-technical and advanced users. "The era of one-size-fits-all enterprise software is over," said Peter Bailis, chief technology officer at Workday. "With Workday Build, customers go from consuming AI to creating with it, giving them the power to build intelligent solutions directly on their most trusted people and financial data." All of these capabilities will be powered by Workday Data Cloud, a new data layer announced today that the company said will connect AI agents to business intelligence and operational systems. In addition, Workday also announced partnerships with Databricks Inc., Salesforce Inc. and Snowflake Inc., permitting zero-copy access to HR and finance data within these data storage platforms.

Workday Rising 25 - Workday's "bold, bodacious" AI vision, viewed from the 'cheap seats'

December marks Carl Eschenbach's third year at the helm of Workday, first as co-CEO with company founder Aneel Bhusri, then as sole custodian from January 2024. This week he's been at the forefront of the company's most high-profile event of the year, Rising, as the Workday faithful gathered in San Francisco to hear about the current and future direction of the company. Watching from the 'cheap seats' in the UK - 'cheap seats', copyright Dennis Howlett, formerly of this parish - I was struck by the confident articulation of the firm's commitment to AI, which was a natural extension perhaps to the pragmatic approach to the subject that Bhusri used to adopt when questioned. Workday has never been part of the hype cycle hysteria that has over-shadowed the past couple of years, but has instead spent its time and money carefully and strategically. At a meeting with analysts at Rising this week, Eschenbach continued that practice, albeit perhaps with some understandable buzz coming off of a successful keynote session to open the jamboree: We really leaned in to this year's innovation keynote and I think displayed probably the most bold bodacious vision we've ever outlined for technology innovation. We clearly are bringing to market the most powerful agents that serve our markets in finance, in HR and in industries we actually announced some industry agents today as well as planning agents. And what I hope everyone recognize is, in the industry right now, it's not about the quantity of agents you're bringing to market. It's the quality of agents and they have to drive real business value. They have to drive real outcomes. To that end, he argued, Workday has this year showed off real world examples of the agents that were announced at last year's gig: We want to make sure no customer is left behind in this transition with AI. And what I mean by that is we are doubling down our investment on our core products because a lot of times these days, everyone go student body right and only talks about AI. When in fact, we have 11,000 customers stronger using our core products, leveraging it more than ever and asking us more. They run their business on Workday. They pay their employees on Workday, they provide benefits, and we need to continue to lean into that going forward to make sure they're getting the best value they can out of the existing platform. From Workday's own perspective, AI is paying off. Some 75% of net new customers in the most recent quarter included AI as their first purchase while 30% of sales back into the existing customer base are buying AI. Meanwhile AI new Annual Contract Value (ACV) has been doubling year-over-year. That was information that was disclosed during the most recent quarterly results announcement, but Eschenbach used Rising to drill down further: In the last year, our growing AI momentum has gone from over $250 million to greater than $450 million, growing 50% year-over-year...Just in the last year, [our agentic AI SKU has] gone from less than $50 million to more than $150 million in ARR exiting Q2. And when you pull this together, this is growing right now in driving about 1.5 percentage points of ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) growth in the overall business. This year's event was also notable for some intriguing partnerships and acquisitive moves on the part of Workday. For his part, Eschenbach pitched: The largest companies, the most innovative companies in the world are coming together with us to be part of the Workday platform. Whether it was today, we saw [Microsoft CEO] Satya Nadella on stage with us.We saw Microsoft come out and talk about engaging and building an agent on top of Workday. We saw Snowflake be part of our Data Cloud that we announced, same with Salesforce, same with Databricks. And I can go on and on. So the platform is resonating, and today was just a glimpse into what we think is possible in the future. Partners and platforms are close to Eschenbach's heart and career: I grew up, most of my career before coming to Workday three years ago, in companies that were truly platform companies, and I love platform companies in enterprise software, I think the holy grail is to become a platform company. It means people are building in through and on top of you. And that's what we want to become, [while] at the same time, being a great applications company. There are very few companies in our industry who can say they have both the best applications and they're a platform company, and we're one of them. A year ago, there were around 600 to 650 partners in the Workday ecosystem, he observed, while today there's over 1,300. Meanwhile activity on the platform keeps increasing: Over the last five years, we've gone from 46 million contracted users on our platform to 75 million today. Over the last five years, the number of annual transactions happening on the Workday platform has gone from under 200 billion to 1 trillion in the last year. Then there was the surprise announcement of a planned takeover of Learning & Development (L&D) tool provider Sana Labs for a cool $1.1 billion. Eschenbach positioned this as "one of the most impactful acquisitions we've made in the history of Workday", explaining: Sana Labs is a way for you to enter Workday, to start Workday and be in Workday for your entire work day. This is the new front door. The new UI for Workday is AI. And Sana Labs is going to give us that, and it's going to be super powerful. There's something special happening here at Workday. There's 30,000 people at this conference this week, wanting to hear about what we're doing to help them navigate the future. It's been an amazing 20 years, but I will tell you, the next 20 at Workday is going to even be stronger. A bold assessment from Eschenbach, but one that seems deserved from the 'cheap seats'. The conference took place just after Oracle saw its stock price and valuation leap up after some major contractual commitment announcements from CEO Safra Catz. The markets responded with even more AI enthusiasm than we've become used to in recent times. But can this hold? Is there an inevitable course correction ahead for the sector? And if there is, is the pragmatic stance taken over the years by Workday likely to shield it from the worst of any downturn? Eschenbach opines: Let's say the macro slows and we have to moderate because our growth areas aren't growing as fast as we can or we want, we're going to continue to lean in to investing in AI because of what I just laid out earlier - our unique position . Even in down markets, the people who recover fastest on the other side when things turn are the ones who never stopped investing in innovation and in technology, and that's exactly what we're going to do here. Overall, a good week for Eschenbach and Workday. Check out diginomica's dedicated Rising 25 content hub here.

Workday to acquire AI firm Sana for $1.1 billion - The Economic Times

Workday said on Tuesday it would acquire artificial intelligence firm Sana for about $1.1 billion, as the human resources software provider looks to drive demand by integrating AI capabilities into its products. The proposed transaction adds to a flurry of deal-making activities in the HR software sector, after private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Workday rival Dayforce for $12.3 billion last month. Shares of Workday were down about 1% in premarket trading. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2026, ending January 31. Allen & Company is the financial adviser to Workday.

What's Going On With Workday Stock Tuesday? - Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY)

Workday Inc. (WDAY) said on Tuesday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sana, an artificial intelligence company that builds next-generation enterprise knowledge tools. The company said Sana's technology will power a new Workday experience that integrates knowledge, data, actions and learning into a single interface. Sana will continue to develop its Sana Learn and Sana Agents products, and Workday said the acquisition would enable Sana to accelerate growth and deliver additional innovation to customers at scale. Also Read: Workday Wins, But Wall Street Worries: Strong Q2 Results Can't Stop Stock Slip The enterprise highlighted the deal will help it build what it calls the "work experience of the future," bringing together enterprise knowledge, data and actions in one place. Workday noted that it will use its data on people and money, along with its partner ecosystem, to deliver a more personalized and proactive employee experience. "Sana's team, AI-native approach, and beautiful design perfectly align with our vision to reimagine the future of work," commented Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product and technology, Workday. Under the terms of the agreement, Workday said it will acquire all outstanding shares of Sana for about $1.1 billion. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal 2026, which ends Jan. 31, 2026, subject to customary conditions. The company reported cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities of $8.19 billion as of July 31, 2025. In a separate announcement, Workday said more than 15 portfolio companies from Workday Ventures have joined its Agent Partner Network. These companies are bringing AI agents to the Workday Marketplace and integrating them with the company's Agent System of Record (ASOR). The ASOR framework is designed to govern AI agents with the same accountability as employees, managing roles, data access, and actions to ensure responsible and secure deployment. Price Action: WDAY shares were trading lower by 0.93% to $220.67 at last check Tuesday. Read Next: Is AI The Trojan Horse? AI-Driven Cyber Risk Could Benefit These ETFs Photo via Shutterstock WDAYWorkday Inc$220.56-0.98%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentum20.39Growth90.18QualityN/AValue16.62Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Workday Pays $1.1 Billion for Sana's AI-Powered Workplace Tools | PYMNTS.com

"Sana's team, AI-native approach, and beautiful design perfectly align with our vision to reimagine the future of work," Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product and technology, Workday, said in a news release. "This will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalized, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace." Founded in 2016, Sana's core products, Sana Learn and Sana Agents, have served more than 1 million users across hundreds of enterprises, the release added. The company will continue to develop those products while also powering a new Workday experience, the news release added. "Our focus has always been on creating intuitive AI tools that improve how people learn and work," said Joel Hellermark, founder and CEO of Sana. "I'm excited to bring these tools to 75 million Workday users and partner with Workday's iconic team to launch a new era of superintelligence for work." The acquisition follows a series of recent product rollouts and partnerships from Workday. Last month, the company teamed with monetization platform Zuora in a collaboration combining Zuora's order-to-cash automation with Workday Financial Management. The companies say the goal is to help business to consumer (B2C) operations handle complex billing and revenue streams from things like subscriptions or usage-based pricing. Meanwhile, research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found that a vast majority of workers see the potential of gen AI to improve productivity. This belief is especially strong among frequent users, with 82% of workers who use gen AI at least weekly agreeing that it can increase productivity. But as familiarity with gen AI grows, so too do worries about job displacement. Among workers who use gen AI weekly, half are concerned the technology could someday eliminate their specific job, versus just 24% of those unfamiliar with it.

Workday to acquire AI firm Sana for US$1.1 billion

Workday said on Tuesday it would acquire artificial intelligence firm Sana for about US$1.1 billion, as the human resources software provider looks to drive demand by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into its products. The proposed transaction adds to a flurry of deal-making activities in the HR software sector, after private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Workday rival Dayforce for $12.3 billion last month. Shares of Workday were down about one per cent in premarket trading. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2026, ending Jan. 31. Allen & Company is the financial adviser to Workday.

Workday Signs Definitive Agreement To Acquire Sana

Workday Rising 2025 -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sana, a leading AI company building the next generation of enterprise knowledge tools. Sana will power a new Workday experience -- where knowledge, data, action, and learning come together as one and create the new front door for work. Since its founding in 2016, Sana has been at the forefront of AI for work, developing intuitive tools that elevate humans with AI. Sana's core products, Sana Learn and Sana Agents, have already served over one million users across hundreds of enterprises. In addition to powering a new Workday experience, Sana will continue to develop Sana Learn and Sana Agents. As part of Workday, Sana will be able to accelerate its growth and deliver even more innovation to its customers at scale. "Sana's team, AI-native approach, and beautiful design perfectly align with our vision to reimagine the future of work," said Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product and technology, Workday. "This will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalized, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace." "Our focus has always been on creating intuitive AI tools that improve how people learn and work," said Joel Hellermark, founder and CEO of Sana. "I'm excited to bring these tools to 75 million Workday users and partner with Workday's iconic team to launch a new era of superintelligence for work." With Sana, Workday will create the work experience of the future, where enterprise knowledge, data and actions converge into one. This will help people get their work done and empower employees with AI agents that can: Leveraging Workday's unique data and context around people and money -- as well as a rich ecosystem of builders and partners -- the employee experience will become personalized and proactive, better anticipating employee needs based on their role, team, and projects. For example, hiring managers will be able to generate tailored dashboards to monitor their live recruitment pipeline, automate the end-to-end performance review process, and receive proactive suggestions on onboarding new hires based on real-time performance data. Sana Agents extends enterprise AI beyond basic search and chat. With the platform's no-code agent builder, users can create AI agents to automate repetitive tasks and act proactively on their behalf. These agents streamline workflows while helping ensure that every action remains secure and compliant with company policies through the Workday Agent System of Record. Existing customers are realizing significant tangible value from Sana Agents across various use cases. For instance, a leading American manufacturer achieved up to 95% time savings; a multinational industrial tech company achieved 90% productivity gains; and a global law firm saw over 60% time savings and 200% increased efficiency. Sana is also a pioneer in applying AI to learning. Its AI-native learning platform, Sana Learn, combines learning management, content creation, course generation, and personalized tutoring through specialized learning agents. Sana Learn has already enabled hundreds of customers across industries to accelerate learning. For example, a global electric vehicle manufacturer boosted learning engagement by 275%; a leading European installation distributor with 7,500 employees cut course creation time from four months to four days; and a global fintech company went from three weeks to three hours for content creation. Sana Learn will complement Workday Learning with hyper-personalized skill building capabilities and AI-native content creation at scale. Enhanced by AI-driven internal mobility with Workday Talent Optimization and HiredScore, this comprehensive learning suite will help employees build skills faster and help enable organizations to scale personalized learning experiences, supporting employee reskilling and upskilling initiatives. "Sana pioneered the world of intelligent agents and AI-native learning at scale," said Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company and a Sana customer. "I think Sana's AI agent and learning system gives Workday customers the opportunity to completely transform the way their employees learn, grow, and operate as super workers in this new age of AI." Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Workday will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Sana for approximately $1.1 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2026, ending January 31, 2026, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Allen & Company LLC is serving as financial advisor to Workday and Orrick is serving as its legal advisor. DLA Piper is serving as Sana's legal advisor. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents. Workday unifies HR and Finance on one intelligent platform with AI at the core to empower people at every level with the clarity, confidence, and insights they need to adapt quickly, make better decisions, and deliver outcomes that matter. Workday is used by more than 11,000 organizations around the world and across industries - from medium-sized businesses to more than 65% of the Fortune 500. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com. Sana is an AI company building the next generation of knowledge tools. Its products have served over a million users globally and are trusted by the likes of Merck and Polestar. To learn more about Sana, visit sanalabs.com.

Workday acquires Sana for $1.1bn

Workday announces that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sana, a "leading AI company creating the next generation of enterprise knowledge tools," for approximately $1.1bn. "Sana is at the forefront of AI for work, developing intuitive tools that elevate humans with AI. Its flagship products have already served more than one million users in hundreds of companies," the US group points out. In addition to offering a new Workday experience, Sana will continue to develop Sana Learn and Sana Agents. As part of the group, it will be able to accelerate its growth and deliver even more innovation to its customers at scale. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's current fiscal year (ending January 31, 2026), subject to customary closing conditions.

Workday to Buy Sana for $1.1 Billion as Part of Enterprise AI Push

Workday is acquiring Sana, an AI company focused on workplace tools, for $1.1 billion as part of a broader push to offer companies and their employees AI services. Workday said the acquisition will help it offer AI agents that customers can use to automate repetitive tasks, search across a company's data sources and create presentations and documents. "This will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalized, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace," said Gerrit Kazmaier, Workday's president of product and technology. Workday also said the Sana acquisition would deepen its educational offerings, allowing companies to quickly create courses and offer personalized tutoring through AI tools, supporting employee skill-building. The transaction is expected to close in Workday's fourth quarter ending January 31, 2026. On Tuesday, Workday also disclosed multiple other initiatives to roll out AI tools to businesses, including a collaboration with Microsoft to help organizations securely manage AI agents across their platforms. It also said it was releasing Workday Build, a developer platform where customers can create AI tools directly through Workday.

Workday to acquire AI firm Sana for $1.1 billion

Workday Inc. is specialized in the publishing of cloud-based management software for businesses, educational institutions and government bodies. The group offers financial management and human resources and analytical solutions for the finance, technology, communications, professional services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, insurance, manufacturing, distribution, hotel, higher education and government administration sectors. Net sales by source of income break down between sales and subscriptions (91%) and professional services (9%). The United States account for 75.2% of net sales.