companies

Workday

HR and finance cloud platform for large employers, now shipping Illuminate AI agents that automate HR case work, financial close tasks, and recruiting steps.

Workday was founded in 2005 by PeopleSoft veterans Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri, built as a cloud-native alternative to the on-premise HR and finance systems Duffield had spent his earlier career selling. The company is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, went public in 2012, and has become one of the standard HCM and financial management platforms for large employers, counting a large share of the Fortune 500 among its customers. Aneel Bhusri returned as sole CEO in February 2026 after Carl Eschenbach's departure, continuing the founder-led culture the company has kept since its start. Workday's AI push is branded Illuminate, launched in 2024 and expanded through 2025 and 2026 with agents aimed at specific HR and finance workflows rather than a single general assistant — a case-handling agent for HR service requests, a financial close agent, a job architecture agent, and industry-specific agents for higher education and other verticals. Workday sells access to these agents through Flex Credits, a consumption-based model layered on top of existing subscriptions rather than a per-agent license.

Founded

2005

Headquarters

Pleasanton, United States

Sector

enterprise