Workday, Inc.

2005–2015

Workday was founded in March 2005 and launched in November 2006. Initially, it was funded by David Duffield and the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. In December 2008, Workday moved its headquarters from Walnut Creek, California, to Pleasanton, California, United States, where PeopleSoft founder Duffield's prior company was located.

On February 6, 2008, Workday announced that it had reached a definitive agreement to purchase Cape Clear Software. In May 2008, Workday signed a large contract with Flextronics to provide human capital management software services. Companies that have publicly disclosed contracts or deployments of Workday include Aviva, Chiquita Brands, and other firms.

On April 29, 2009, Workday announced that it had secured $75 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Existing investors Greylock Partners and Workday CEO and co‑founder Dave Duffield also participated in the round. On October 24, 2011, Workday announced $85 million in new funding, bringing the total capital raised to $250 million. Investors in the latest round included T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Janus, and Bezos Expeditions. As of spring 2012, Workday had 310 customers, ranging from mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies.

In October 2012, Workday launched its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange with ticker symbol WDAY. Its shares were priced at $28 and ended trading Friday, October 12, at $48.69, which "propelled the start-up to a market capitalization of nearly $9.5 billion including unexercised stock options". It sold 22.75 million Class A shares, raising $637 million. The IPO raised more cash than any launch in the US technology sector since Facebook's $16 billion IPO in May 2012. Its shares surged 74% in its IPO, underscoring investor interest in cloud computing.

2015–present

In 2016, Workday launched a cloud-based student information system to augment its portfolio of financial management and human capital management products. In 2018, Workday acquired Filip Doušek's company Stories.bi.

In 2020, Fortune magazine ranked Workday Inc. at number five on its Fortune List of the Top 100 Companies to Work For in 2020 based on an employee satisfaction survey. The CEO of Workday was Aneel Bhusri, who is a partner with Greylock Partners and handled senior leadership positions earlier in his career at PeopleSoft. In 2020, Chano Fernandez was promoted to co-CEO along with Bhusri. Dave Duffield served as the chairman of the board until his resignation in April 2022, after which Aneel Bhusri took over as the chairman.

In November 2021, Workday announced its acquisition of VNDLY, a startup that helps companies manage external workforce personnel, for $510 million. Sequoia Capital's Carl Eschenbach replaced Fernandez as co-CEO in December 2022. The company also announced that Eschenbach would become its sole CEO after March 2024, with Bhusri moving to the role of executive chair.

It was announced in February 2025 that Workday would cut 8.5% of its workforce in favor of investing in artificial intelligence to counter a "softer macroeconomic environment". In the same year, the company acquired Paradox, which enables the implementation of a conversational AI agent.

Business model

Workday sells subscriptions to its services. Expenses are booked up front when it signs on a new customer, but the associated revenue is recognized over the life of multiyear agreements. In the first quarter of 2016, Workday announced annual revenue in excess of $1 billion for the first time in fiscal year 2016.

Corporate governance

Duffield holds voting rights to Workday shares that are worth $3.4 billion and Bhusri holds voting rights to shares valued at $1.3 billion. Collectively, they hold 67% of the company's voting shares. This voting structure makes the event of a hostile takeover much less likely.

Product

Workday provides software to help businesses manage finances and human resources. Key features include:

Global workforce and recruitment management with real-time reporting and analytics.

Controversies

Lawsuit over hiring algorithm bias

In 2023, Workday was named in a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven hiring tools discriminated against applicants based on age, race, and disability. The lead plaintiff, Derek Mobley, claimed that Workday's résumé screening algorithms systematically excluded older candidates and individuals with disabilities from consideration. Workday denied the allegations, stating that its systems were not designed to consider protected characteristics directly, but critics argued that bias emerged through proxy variables in the data.

In May 2025, a US District Court judge allowed the age discrimination claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to proceed as a collective action. Subsequent rulings required Workday to disclose the list of clients that used its AI hiring features. Legal analysts noted that the case could set a significant precedent for whether software vendors can be held liable under US employment discrimination law when their algorithms are used in hiring at scale.

2025 data breaches

In 2025, Workday was caught up in two related security incidents tied to its use of Salesforce's CRM platform. One was a social engineering attack in which employees were targeted with voice phishing calls to obtain Salesforce access. Another was a supply chain attack through Salesloft's Drift platform, which affected hundreds of organizations, including Workday.

Workday claimed that core customer data remained secure in these attacks, and that the threat actors were only able to obtain "commonly available" data such as business contact information on their clients. Several lawsuits were filed against Workday, in addition to Salesforce and other defendants, alleging that the data breach was highly preventable by the defendants.