Workday's shares had fallen about 15% year to date and remained more than 40% below their 2024 peak before Thursday's surge. Investors have questioned the durability of traditional enterprise software as artificial intelligence advances, even as Workday rolled out dozens of AI agents under its Illuminate platform across 2025 and 2026. The company serves more than 11,500 customers and processes over 1 trillion transactions annually, a data advantage analysts say is difficult to replicate.
The timing of the reported talks coincides with other strategic pressure. Weeks earlier, activist investor Elliott Management disclosed a stake of more than $2 billion in Workday and publicly backed the existing management team, a move that sent shares up nearly 9% at the time. That disclosure raised the question of whether a board-level review was already underway when Silver Lake engaged.
Silver Lake, founded in 1999 and managing approximately $114 billion in assets as of March 2026, completed a roughly $55 billion take-private of Electronic Arts in 2024 alongside Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners. A Workday deal of similar scale would test the firm's capacity to finance large technology buyouts at today's higher borrowing costs.