Published: August 20, 2026 | Category: Deals & M&A
Silver Lake is negotiating a takeover of Workday that could value the human resources and finance software maker at more than $50 billion, a deal that would rank among the largest software buyouts on record. Shares in the Pleasanton, California company jumped nearly 18 percent to $206.45 on August 13, lifting its market value to roughly $51.1 billion from about $43 billion before news of the talks broke.
The discussions between Silver Lake and Workday have been under way for months and remain preliminary, according to people familiar with the matter, who cautioned there is no guarantee an agreement will be reached. Neither side has commented publicly.
Silver Lake, which built its buyout of Electronic Arts on a roughly $55 billion deal last year alongside Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners, could again bring in co-investors to finance a transaction of this size, one person said. The firm has a long history in enterprise software, having taken Dell Technologies and VMware private and backed Qualtrics.
A Departure From This Year’s Caution
A deal for Workday would be a marked departure from the tone of this year’s buyout market. Private equity firms have largely avoided large software take-privates in 2026, wary that rapid advances in artificial intelligence make it harder to underwrite the durability of traditional software revenue. The largest deals to close this year have been smaller: Hg Capital’s roughly $6.4 billion agreement to take financial software maker OneStream private in January, and Thoma Bravo’s approximately $12.3 billion deal for payroll provider Dayforce.
Workday’s stock had fallen about 15 percent this year before Thursday’s jump and remains more than 40 percent below its 2024 peak, as investors weighed whether AI tools would erode demand for the company’s cloud-based HR and finance platforms. The company reported fiscal 2025 revenue of $9.6 billion, up 13 percent, and operating cash flow of $2.9 billion, up 19 percent, though revenue growth has slowed from 16 percent the year before.
A Company Refounded Under Pressure
Founded in 2005 by former PeopleSoft executives Aneel Bhusri and David Duffield, Workday went public in 2012 and now serves more than 11,500 customers, including Netflix, U.S. Bank, Johns Hopkins University and Thomson Reuters. Bhusri returned as chief executive in February, replacing Carl Eschenbach, as the company pushes further into AI-driven products to defend its core business.
A completed transaction would rank alongside the largest software buyouts in history and mark one of the clearest tests yet of whether private equity is willing to underwrite legacy enterprise software companies as they retool for an AI-dominated market. It would also add to a stand-out year for large-scale mergers and acquisitions, following deals such as Bank of America’s $250 billion infrastructure financing pledge and a wave of private credit activity across the sector.