Workday has agreed to acquire identity platform C1.ai, adding identity governance technology for human workers and AI agents to its software.
Neither company disclosed financial terms. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to complete in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2027.
The acquisition focuses on how companies grant and remove access to internal systems as staff join, change roles and leave. It also addresses a related issue for AI agents, which many businesses now deploy across tasks involving email, finance systems, code repositories, customer software and cloud infrastructure.
C1.ai's software connects to a wide range of business systems and manages access rights across them. Workday wants to tie that process more closely to events already recorded in its platform, such as hiring, internal moves and departures.
That would link access decisions to workforce changes within the same software environment for both employees and AI agents.
AI oversight
The transaction reflects a broader shift in corporate software as businesses try to establish controls around autonomous software tools. Workday cited research from C1.ai showing that 95% of large US companies already use autonomous agents, while Deloitte found only 21% have a mature way to govern them.
Those figures point to a gap between deployment and oversight. Companies may know where agents are being used, but not always what systems they can access, what permissions they hold or when those permissions should be removed.
Workday has been positioning its products around what it calls a combined workforce of people and AI agents. C1.ai gives it a way to extend that strategy into identity governance, an area that has traditionally relied on service tickets, manual approvals, spreadsheets and periodic access reviews.
Many organisations still use those methods to manage permissions across hundreds of applications. That can leave workers waiting for access to the tools they need, while former staff or inactive systems may retain privileges that should have been withdrawn.
Product fit
Every new hire, job change and exit is already a recorded event in Workday's software. By adding C1.ai, the company aims to turn those events into triggers for granting, changing or revoking access across other business systems.
The same logic applies to software agents. Some act on behalf of an employee and may need only limited access, while others operate more independently and require separate oversight.
Workday said its Agent System of Record already gives companies a place to register and manage agents. C1.ai is intended to extend that system by governing what those agents can access inside Workday and in external enterprise systems.
"Today's companies run on a combined workforce of people and AI agents," said Gerrit Kazmaier, President of Product and Technology at Workday.
"With C1.ai, we'll help secure that workforce by managing and enforcing exactly who - and what - has access to connected apps and systems, giving each person and agent the right access at the right moment to make work easier, safer and more compliant," Kazmaier said.
For C1.ai, the deal places its identity tools inside a larger human resources and finance software group with a broad enterprise customer base. Workday serves more than 11,500 organisations worldwide, including more than 65% of the Fortune 500.
Identity governance has long been a back-office technology category, but the spread of AI agents is giving it a more direct role in business operations. An agent that handles finance workflows, customer data or software development may need rapid access to multiple systems, but also clear limits and a record of what it has done.
C1.ai's software is designed to provide that record while applying policies, approvals and scoped access. Once an agent is registered, it can receive the access it needs when required and lose that access when its task or role ends.
"Enterprises can't secure the AI era using yesterday's IT tickets," said Alex Bovee, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of C1.ai.
"Workday is the operational heart of the enterprise, and by bringing C1.ai's identity governance directly into that core, we'll be able to manage access for every human and agent in real time - making work faster without making it less secure," Bovee said.