Workday, an enterprise AI platform for managing people, money and agents, has unveiled a range of new features and innovations during the Workday Rising event held in San Francisco earlier this month.
Among these announcements are the launch of Workday Data Cloud, Workday Illuminate and Workday Build.
Workday seeks to unify human resources and finance on one intelligent platform with AI at the core, to empower people at every level with the clarity, confidence, and insights they need to adapt quickly, make better decisions, and deliver outcomes that matter.
Workday is already being used by over 11,000 organisations around the world and across a wide range of industries, including transport and logistics. Its innovative technology is being embraced by everything from medium sized businesses through to Fortune 500 companies.
Workday Data Cloud
Workday Data Cloud is a new data layer that will help organisations unlock the strategic value of their HR and finance data by connecting it to their existing analytics platforms and operational systems. Customers will get rich, secure, real-time access to insights – turning workforce and financial information into action faster than ever.
Workday is partnering with Snowflake, Databricks, and Salesforce to give customers direct, zero-copy access to their core HR and finance data within the platforms they already use and bring that customer and business data into Workday with the same zero-copy approach. This will eliminate the need for costly data exports, bulky reports, and stale duplicates – just clean, governed data at work.
As an example, in the retail space, a business could combine Workday data on employee engagement with Snowflake data on store performance to help them understand which teams are driving the most sales. Or finance teams can unify Workday’s financial data with market, risk, or sales data in Databricks to power real-time forecasting and scenario planning.
Additionally, Workday Data Cloud enables HR leaders to enrich retention and performance insights from Workday with product sales data, sales team KPIs like sales quota attainment, or operational metrics like case resolution times from Salesforce – enabling real-time employee insights linked to business outcomes. This will help data teams build more accurate predictive models, automate insights across departments, and drive innovation – all using trusted, governed, and current data at the core.
“Too often, the most valuable data inside organisations is locked away – hard to access, slow to move, and costly to connect,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology, Workday.
“With Workday Data Cloud and our zero-copy approach, customers will finally have simple, secure, and open access to their most trusted data – fuelling a new generation of AI-powered innovation.”
Workday Data Cloud will provide a set of capabilities that enable organisations to securely connect and analyse HR and finance data in context with customer, market, and operational data. Together, these features will help ensure leaders have timely, governed insights to guide decision-making and accelerate AI innovation.
Executive vice president of product at Snowflake, Christian Kleinerman, commented, “The partnership between Snowflake and Workday is a major step forward in how companies can leverage their most valuable asset: their data. By eliminating the friction of data silos, we are making it possible for customers to accelerate their AI innovation and achieve a faster return on investment. This means business leaders can get the right insights, at the right time, to make smarter decisions and gain a competitive edge.”
Stephen Orban, senior vice president of product ecosystems and partnerships at Databricks, added, “By breaking down silos, this partnership enables customers to seamlessly enrich their data lakes with a trusted Workday data layer, unlocking new opportunities for innovation and smarter decision-making.”
Workday Data Cloud will be available to early adopter customers in the first half of 2026 and generally available later that year.
Workday Illuminate
Workday Illuminate has expanded with agents for HR, finance, and industry. Illuminate agents are purpose-built for work – embedded in HR and finance, powered by Workday’s unmatched data and context, and designed to deliver measurable outcomes. The new agents take on some of the most complex processes – like performance reviews, workforce planning, and financial close – helping organisations work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence.
AI spending has skyrocketed, but most companies aren’t seeing real value. Deployments are too often piecemeal, siloed, and disconnected from the way work actually gets done. In fact, an MIT study found that despite billions spent on AI last year, only 5 per cent of organisations saw a return.
Workday’s new Illuminate agents change that, embedding AI directly into workflows and transforming processes to deliver real business results.
“Too many AI efforts amount to random acts of automation that never scale or deliver real value. The barrier of self-building AI on legacy systems and closed platforms is simply too high,” said Gerrit. “Workday Illuminate is different. With purpose-built AI agents and a single, open enterprise platform, we’re redefining ERP for the AI era – transforming it from a passive system of record into a system of action that drives real outcomes.”
Workday powers more than a trillion transactions each year across millions of workers and tens of thousands of roles – giving it unmatched insight into how people and money move through organisations.
With this depth of context in HR and Finance, Workday can pinpoint the moments that matter most and apply AI where it delivers the greatest impact. Illuminate agents transform processes like hiring, performance, planning, and financial close into more efficient, strategic outcomes.
Designed to work alongside people, these agents handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks so employees can focus on higher-value work. And over time, they learn and adapt; becoming smarter, more valuable partners across the business.
Workday Illuminate for HR agents: HR leaders are navigating the complexities of an AI-powered workplace – rethinking how people thrive in a new era of AI. They’re under pressure to attract, retain, and engage talent while reducing administrative burden. New Illuminate for HR agents help create better employee experiences and free HR teams to focus on strategy by automating critical but time-consuming processes.
Workday Illuminate for financials agents: Finance teams today face the dual challenge of protecting and growing the business while adapting to a constantly changing environment. New Illuminate for financials agents are designed to streamline reconciliation, testing, and planning, enabling leaders to shift time from manual tasks to value-added analysis and decision-making.
The cost and profitability agent simplifies cost and profitability setup by allowing users to define allocation rules and drivers using natural language to help them gain richer insights. The financial close agent streamlines the financial close process with automation and real-time visibility, helping transform it into a simplified and efficient workflow. And the financial test agent continuously tests financials to help detect fraud and enable compliance, providing continuous insight into an organisation’s financial health.
New Illuminate agents will be available in 2026. Workday Flex Credits are now available to purchase.
Workday Build
Workday Build opens access to the company’s applications, data, and AI in entirely new ways, empowering every customer, partner, and developer to customise Workday, extend its capabilities, and deliver AI innovations faster – with the trust and security Workday is known for.
Workday Build will also feature the new Workday Flowise Agent Builder, a low-code tool that makes it simple to build, deploy, and manage custom AI agents within Workday. This will allow customers to leverage the data and context in Workday to create business-specific AI agents with speed, flexibility, and confidence.
“The era of one-size-fits-all enterprise software is over,” said Peter Bailis, chief technology officer, Workday. “With Workday Build, customers go from consuming AI to creating with it, giving them the power to build intelligent solutions directly on their most trusted people and financial data. This transforms how they do work, within the security of the Workday platform they already depend on.”
Announced at Workday DevCon 2025, Workday’s new AI developer toolset brought the power of Workday Illuminate to developers, enabling them to customise and connect AI apps and agents on the Workday platform. Workday Build is the next step in this journey, unifying these tools and programs into a single developer platform.
The new Workday Flowise Agent Builder will be available to customers that have Workday Extend Professional in the first half of 2026.
For more information about Workday, visit the website at workday.com.