Workday acquires agentic AI-search & learning specialist Sana
Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach spoke openly at Workday Rising 2025 to explain how his firm has developed some of its own talent pool organically (through internal skills and competency development) and, conversely, also through inorganic growth (as a result of mergers & acquisitions) in what the company insists is always a harmonious way.
Among the acquisitions achieved or in process this year is Sana.
Workday has now entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sana, an enterprise knowledge AI tools specialist known for its work developing tools that elevate humans with AI.
Sana’s core products are Sana Learn and Sana Agents; both technologies will continue under these labels (for now, at the time of writing) on their already-established development trajectory.
Workday says the acquisition will combine Sana’s AI-powered search, agents and learning with Workday’s context and data to power proactive, personalised employee experiences.
“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, personalised and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace.”
With Sana, Workday will create the work experience of the future, where enterprise knowledge, data and actions converge into one.
“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 team to launch a new era of superintelligence for work.”
A front door for work
Inside Workday, Sana will help users find answers, information and files by searching across a company’s critical data sources, including Workday, Google Drive, SharePoint and Office365.
Sana will also help people act proactively by anticipating needs, summarising insights and assisting with projects. It will create presentations, documents and dashboards, even full learning courses, based on company knowledge. It will automate repetitive tasks and routine work by executing workflows end-to-end.
Using Workday’s data and context around people and money – as well as its ecosystem of builders and partners – the employee experience will become personalised and proactive, 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.
Beyond basic search
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.
Sana is also a developer of tools that specialise in applying AI to learning. Its AI-native learning platform, Sana Learn, combines learning management, content creation, course generation and personalised tutoring through specialised learning agents.
Hyper-personalised skill building
Sana Learn will complement Workday Learning with hyper-personalised skill-building capabilities and AI-native content creation at scale. Enhanced by AI-driven internal mobility with Workday Talent Optimisation and HiredScore, this learning suite will help employees build skills faster and help enable organisations to scale personalised 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.
Flowise acquisition
Workday also recently (August this year) acquired acquired Flowise, a low-code platform for building AI agents from simple chatbots to complex automated workflows.
The company says that Flowise’s platform supports “every part of the AI development journey” i.e. from prototyping and building to debugging, evaluation and analytics… making it easier to take AI agents from idea to production.
With its visual builder and integration across the AI ecosystem, Flowise allows software application development professionals to create agentic systems with control and scalability.
Built on an open-source foundation, Flowise has seen adoption – processing millions of chats and workflows, earning over 42,000 GitHub stars and gaining traction across industries such as consulting, finance, healthcare, customer support etc.
