Workday acquires Swedish startup Sana in a €928 million AI deal

Workday, Inc., the American enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Stockholm’s Sana, an AI company building the next generation of enterprise knowledge tools, for approximately €928 million.

According to the companies, Sana will power a new Workday experience – where knowledge, data, action, and learning come together as one and create the new front door for work.

“Our focus has always been on creating intuitive AI tools that improve how people learn and work,” said Joel Hellermark, Founder and CEO of Sana. “I’m excited to bring these tools to 75 million Workday users and partner with Workday’s iconic team to launch a new era of superintelligence for work.”

Since its founding in 2016, Sana has been innovating AI for work, developing intuitive tools that “elevate humans with AI“. Sana’s core products, Sana Learn and Sana Agents, have already served over one million users across hundreds of enterprises.

In addition to powering a new Workday experience, Sana will continue to develop Sana Learn and Sana Agents. As part of Workday, Sana will be able to accelerate its growth and deliver even more innovation to its customers at scale.

“Sana’s team, AI-native approach, and beautiful design perfectly align with our vision to reimagine the future of work,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, president, Product & Technology, Workday. “This will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalized, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace.”

With Sana, Workday says they will create the work experience of the future – helping people get their work done and empower employees with AI agents that can:

• Find answers, information and files by instantly searching across a company’s data sources, including Workday, Google Drive, SharePoint, and Office365.
• Act proactively by anticipating needs, summarising insights, and assisting with projects.
• Create presentations, documents, and dashboards, even full learning courses, based on company knowledge.
• Automate repetitive tasks and routine work by executing workflows end-to-end.

For example, hiring managers will be able to generate tailored dashboards to monitor their live recruitment pipeline, automate the end-to-end performance review process, and receive proactive suggestions on onboarding new hires based on real-time performance data.

With Sana’s no-code agent builder, Sana Agents, users can create AI agents to automate repetitive tasks and act proactively on their behalf. These agents streamline workflows while helping ensure that every action remains secure and compliant with company policies through the Workday Agent System of Record. For instance, a leading American manufacturer achieved up to 95% time savings with Sana Agents; a multinational industrial tech company achieved 90% productivity gains; and a global law firm saw over 60% time savings and 200% increased efficiency.

Sana’s AI-native learning platform, Sana Learn, combines learning management, content creation, course generation, and personalised tutoring through specialised learning agents.  For example, a global electric vehicle manufacturer boosted learning engagement by 275%; a leading European installation distributor with 7,500 employees cut course creation time from four months to four days; and a global fintech company went from three weeks to three hours for content creation.

Sana Learn will complement Workday Learning with hyper-personalised skill building capabilities and AI-native content creation at scale. Enhanced by AI-driven internal mobility with Workday Talent Optimisation and HiredScore, this learning suite will aim to help employees build skills faster and help enable organizations to scale personalised learning experiences, supporting employee reskilling and upskilling initiatives.

“Sana pioneered the world of intelligent agents and AI-native learning at scale,” said Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company and a Sana customer. “I think Sana’s AI agent and learning system gives Workday customers the opportunity to completely transform the way their employees learn, grow, and operate as superworkers in this new age of AI.”

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday’s fiscal year 2026, ending January 31, 2026, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

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