Workday CEO: Aneel Bhusri Unplugged + Fired Up

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack why Workday customers are demanding AI agents and agentic capabilities.

Highlights

00:03 — I had a chance to speak with Workday co-founder, then CEO, then chairman, now back as CEO, Aneel Bhusri. And absolutely, Aneel, I would say, is back as CEO. He is unplugged in this conversation and definitely fired up about Workday’s prospects, and the sort of reimagination of the company as an AI-first, AI-powered, agentic powerhouse moving into the future here.

01:27 — He said none of them is talking about vibe coding applications. He said the enterprise apps are here, but he said "it’s our job at Workday to ensure that they are reinvigorated and kept as modern as possible, with as much AI and agentic capability as possible."

02:29 — He also said, “We’ve got to take on a startup culture, startup mentality, a startup mindset that lets us continually experiment, push new things out, and not get stuck in doing things a certain way.”

02:58 — The opportunity now that customers see is for the right sort of agentic AI to come in to enhance what the applications are already doing, to help these companies move faster, get better insights, allow people to be able to move up to higher-value work.

Visit Cloud Wars for more.