Workday To Acquire C1.ai To Strengthen Identity Governance And Secure Access For Employees And AI Agents; No Financial Terms Disclosed

With C1.ai, Workday Can Give Every Person and AI Agent the Right Access from the Day They Join to the Day They Leave — and Everywhere in Between

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Workday Rising 2026 – Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ:WDAY), the trusted agentic platform for HR, finance, and IT, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire C1.ai, a leading agentic identity platform for people and agents. C1.ai connects to the systems a business runs on – from email and CRM to code repositories, finance systems, and cloud infrastructure – giving each person and agent the right access at the right time and removing it the moment it's no longer needed.

 

Most organizations manage employee access across hundreds of applications through manual service tickets, spreadsheets, and periodic reviews as workers join, move, and leave. The rapid adoption of AI agents has accelerated this challenge: C1.ai's research shows that 95% of large U.S. companies already run autonomous agents, yet according to Deloitte's State of AI research, only 21% report having a mature way to govern them. Organizations need to know who and what has access, why they have it, and when to remove it. Without those controls, AI agents can become lawless, creating security and compliance risks across the business.

Every new hire, job change, and exit is a Workday event. Workday already governs the people, money, and agents at the heart of the enterprise. With C1.ai, Workday will become the identity governance layer for people, money, and agents. Every employee and agent using Workday can have the right access to the apps, data, and systems they need, from the day they join to the day they leave, and every move in between.