Private equity firm Silver Lake is in talks to acquire Workday, the enterprise software company whose cloud platforms run human resources and financial management for tens of thousands of organizations, according to a Reuters exclusive published Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.
A deal would value Workday at roughly $43 billion based on its market value before the report and would rank among the largest software buyouts in history. The discussions have been ongoing for months, the sources said, cautioning that talks remain fluid and no agreement is guaranteed. Neither company has commented publicly.
Investors responded immediately: Workday shares jumped as much as 25% before being halted repeatedly in late-afternoon trading, closing up nearly 18% — the stock's best day since 2016 — with the company's market value ending near $51 billion.
The takeover interest lands at a delicate moment for the software industry. Wall Street has been punishing legacy enterprise-software vendors over fears that AI assistants will erode seat-based pricing models. Workday shares were down about 7% year over year before Thursday's surge, even after the company posted better-than-expected results in May and raised its outlook on AI tailwinds.
Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri returned as CEO in March after Carl Eschenbach stepped down. Jefferies analyst Brent Thill noted Bhusri's close ties to Silver Lake's Egon Durban, calling a deal "something that could make sense" as software valuations reset.
A buyout by Silver Lake — one of the largest technology-focused private equity firms, with a long record of taking public software companies private — would test whether private capital sees value in enterprise software that public markets have soured on. It would also signal renewed appetite for big software deals despite ongoing AI disruption fears.
