Workday Rising kicked off in Las Vegas, October 12-15, with CEO Aneel Bhusri describing the company’s push into agentic AI as a “re-founding.” Having reinvented HR and finance software for the 21st century and maturing into a Fortune 500 company, it was time for Workday to think like a startup again.
That was the lead-in to a series of major product announcements centered on the idea of “lawful AI” In a year when many of the biggest stories around technology have inspired more anxiety than excitement, Workday presented a vision for how corporate-approved guardrails can help companies safely and effectively harness agentic AI. From the top down, the message was clear: Bolt-on solutions don’t help anyone; it’s time to redesign work for a new era.
During Tuesday’s Innovation Keynote, Bhusri was joined by Gerrit Kazmaier, Workday’s president of Product and Technology, for a series of product announcements.
Chief among them was the announcement that Sana, Workday’s agentic platform, is now the new “front door to Workday.” Once administrators enable it for their companies, employees will have a completely new homepage experience. They can just start typing what they need in plain language, and Sana will bring in the right agent to help them.
Other key announcements included:
The keynote ended with Workday’s own version of Apple’s “one more thing,” as Bhusri announced an agreement to acquire C1.ai. This investment is what will enable each person and agent to have the right access at the right time, and only when it’s needed. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of January 2027.
While Tuesday’s focus was on how agents will transform work, Ethan Mollick’s Community Keynote on Wednesday emphasized that humans are still the ones to decide what the future of AI looks like.
The Wharton School professor and best-selling author explored what he calls AI’s “jagged frontier,” which is the idea that AI is surprisingly good at some things and surprisingly bad at others. For humans and AI to coexist, people need to use the tools at their disposal, because only by using them can they discover what those strengths and weaknesses are.
That’s why, he said, some of the best AI experts aren’t in a Silicon Valley lab but inside your organization, where they’re already learning firsthand about where the technology helps or falls short.
The goal, he argued, isn’t about removing humans from the equation but finding the right balance. Augmentation, not replacement, is where creativity lies.
Humans were at the heart of OneSource Virtual’s three sessions across Tuesday and Wednesday, with customer stories showing how the company has helped them transform payroll, finance, and financial well-being.
In “Stop Playing Defense: How Payroll Leaders Get Strategic With Workday,” executives from Aprio joined OSV’s Michael Roseman and Dawn Crawford to share how OSV has given their payroll team the capacity to think beyond the next run and spend more time on innovation.
In “Doing More with the Team You Have: AP Operations in the Workday Ecosystem,” the conversation turned to a familiar topic for finance professionals: how do you handle increasingly more invoices when headcount remains the same? Southeastern Freight Lines’ financial systems manager took the stage with OSV’s Carl Madaffari, Lauren Carey, and Kaylan McDuff to share his own story of how OSV has helped them with that exact problem.
Finally, in “From Bandage to Blueprint: A New Vision for Earned Wage Access and Employee Financial Resilience,” U.S. Venture’s VP of Total Rewards and OSV’s Becky Riley discussed how earned wage access became the springboard for the company’s broader financial well-being strategy that would do even more to support employees.
A similar theme rippled through each session: augmenting how teams work, not always through agentic solutions, but by redesigning the work so that, internally, people have more time for what really matters and aren’t bogged down by unnecessary financial anxiety.
Even with all the buzz about AI at this year’s conference, the most important thing about Workday Rising remains its focus on community and what people can accomplish when they work together. This year’s event brought together approximately 30,000 people in person and online. With every keynote, session, and party, what people were truly celebrating was the power of partnership.
The tools for doing that work are changing, but the primary goal remains the same: working together to achieve great things.