Workday CTO reveals AI agent strategy and billion-dollar acquisitions

Peter Bailis, the new CTO of Workday, discusses the company's ambitious AI agent strategy and recent major acquisitions including Sana, Paradox, and Flowise. He explains Workday's vision to become the "agent system of record" - extending their people and money management platform to govern AI agents across enterprises.

Bailis reveals how Workday plans to compete with tech giants like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and SAP by leveraging their unique position as the system of record for 75 million users. The conversation covers their open data lake strategy, enterprise search ambitions, and how recent acquisitions will accelerate their AI platform vision.

Key insights include Workday's approach to AI agent governance, the technical challenges of enterprise search, and why the company believes they can win the "experience layer" battle in enterprise AI. Bailis also discusses the evolution of agent protocols and Workday's strategy to enable customers to build AI applications on their platform.

Key Takeaways:
- Workday introduces "agent system of record" concept for AI governance
- Three major acquisitions: Sana ($1B), Paradox, and Flowise explained
- Strategy to compete with Salesforce, ServiceNow, and SAP in AI platform space
- Open data lake with zero-copy architecture and Apache Iceberg format
- Vision for enterprise search as the future front door for knowledge workers
- Discussion of agent protocols (MCP, A2A, OAuth) and delegation permissions

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction and agent system of record concept
2:47 Managing AI agents across multiple platforms
4:32 Standards and protocols for agent management
6:45 Three major acquisitions strategy explained
10:23 Competition with enterprise giants discussion
14:38 David vs Goliath analysis and efficiency focus
17:32 Open data platform and integration strategy
21:47 Future of enterprise search and user interfaces

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