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Workday, Inc.

Enterprise Cloud SoftwareFounded 2005
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Company data updated: October 2026

Founders

Who Founded Workday?

Dave Duffield, Aneel Bhusri · Founded 2005 · HQ today: Pleasanton, California

Who founded Workday?

Workday was founded by Dave Duffield, Aneel Bhusri in 2005. It is now led by Aneel Bhusri.

Founders
Dave Duffield, Aneel Bhusri
Founded
2005
Headquarters
Pleasanton, California
Number of founders
2
Current CEO
Aneel Bhusri (since 2026)
Where was Workday founded?
Workday was founded in Pleasanton, California, United States in 2005.
When was Workday founded?
Workday was founded in 2005.
Who started Workday?
Workday was founded by Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri.
How old is Workday?
Workday is 21 years old as of 2026.

Founding Story

Following the hostile takeover of PeopleSoft by Oracle in 2005, PeopleSoft founder David Duffield and chief strategist Aneel Bhusri decided to build a modern successor from scratch. They founded Workday in 2005 with a radically different architectural approach: delivering human capital management software natively in the cloud through a true multi-tenant SaaS model. This fundamentally eliminated the painful, multi-year upgrade cycles that had historically plagued legacy on-premise HR systems.

Dave Duffield

Co-founder 2005

Background

Duffield earned an engineering degree and an MBA from Cornell University, worked at IBM, and founded several software companies before starting PeopleSoft in 1987.

Role at Workday, Inc.

Dave Duffield founded PeopleSoft, which grew into a major HR and ERP software vendor before Oracle acquired it through a hostile takeover completed in early 2005. He then co-founded Workday with Aneel Bhusri and served as co-CEO with Bhusri until 2014, later remaining on the board as chairman before stepping back from the company.

Education: Cornell University College of Engineering; Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

David Arthur Duffield was born on September 21, 1940. He is chief executive emeritus of Workday and founder and chairman of Ridgeline. He has given more than $500 million to Cornell University, which renamed its College of Engineering after him. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Aneel Bhusri

Co-founder 2005

Background

Bhusri studied electrical engineering and economics at Brown University and earned an MBA from Stanford. He held senior product strategy and business development roles at PeopleSoft and later became a partner at venture firm Greylock.

Role at Workday, Inc.

Aneel Bhusri co-founded Workday in 2005. He was co-CEO with Dave Duffield, then sole CEO from 2014, and later shared the CEO role before handing it to Carl Eschenbach in February 2024 and becoming executive chair. On February 9, 2026, Workday announced that Bhusri had returned as CEO, effective immediately, with Eschenbach stepping down. He is currently co-founder, CEO, and chair.

Aneel Bhusri was born in 1966 in Pittsford.

Workday, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Aneel Bhusri

Co-founder, CEO, and Chair

2026 – Present

He scaled the company into a dominant cloud SaaS provider, fundamentally reshaping the enterprise software market before handing over the CEO reins.

Zane Rowe

Chief Financial Officer

2023 – Present

He strengthened the corporate balance sheet, enabling strategic AI acquisitions while maintaining disciplined capital allocation.

Carl Eschenbach

Former CEO

2022 – 2026

As co-CEO and later sole CEO, he aggressively pushed the platform beyond HR into the broader and highly lucrative enterprise financial management sector.

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Keep researching Workday

Who Founded Workday? FAQ

Who founded Workday, Inc.?

Workday was founded in March 2005 by American enterprise software visionaries Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri.

What was Dave Duffield's career before Workday?

Dave Duffield founded enterprise software giant PeopleSoft in 1987, serving as CEO and Chairman and building it into the world's leading HR and ERP software provider until Oracle acquired it in 2005.

What was Aneel Bhusri's background before Workday?

Aneel Bhusri was Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at PeopleSoft and a senior partner at premier venture capital firm Greylock Partners, where he backed early cloud winners like Pure Storage and Okta.

How did Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft lead to Workday?

In 2004, Oracle launched an aggressive 18-month hostile takeover of PeopleSoft, ultimately purchasing it for $10.3 billion; rather than retiring, Duffield and Bhusri teamed up to prove that pure cloud software would defeat legacy on-premise ERP.

How did the founders self-fund Workday in its early days?

Dave Duffield initially funded Workday with tens of millions of dollars of his personal fortune from the PeopleSoft sale, giving the company complete freedom to engineer its architecture without short-term VC pressure.

What educational bond do Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri share?

Both founders are distinguished alumni of Cornell University and have made historic philanthropic donations to the university, including endowing Duffield Hall and the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

What philanthropic causes is Dave Duffield famous for?

Duffield established Maddie's Fund, endowing hundreds of millions of dollars to animal welfare, pet rescue, and no-kill animal shelters across the United States.

What is the enduring legacy of the founders' partnership?

Duffield and Bhusri demonstrated that treating employees with dignity and prioritizing customer happiness could build not just one, but two multi-billion-dollar enterprise software powerhouses.

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Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.