Workday announced a €175m investment in Dublin last year, with plans to create 200 jobs.

US private equity firm Silver Lake is reportedly in talks to acquire HR platform Workday. Yesterday’s (13 August) report from Reuters sent Workday’s shares surging nearly 18pc, upping its market capitalisation to more than $50bn.

The two businesses have held acquisition talks in recent months but a final deal is yet to emerge, sources told the publication. Silver Lake could tap additional investors for a joint acquisition.

Silver Lake, last year, bought video game giant Electronic Arts for $55bn with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners – a private equity firm founded by Jared Kushner.

Silver Lake is also one of three managing investors behind the TikTok US wing alongside Oracle and MGX. The venture capital firm has backed major technology and software companies, including Dell, Airtable, India’s Jio Platforms, Stripe and Waymo.

Prior to the report, Workday was valued at around $43bn, with its shares having fallen around 15pc so far this year and more than 40pc from their 2024 peak.

Like many, the company has made major bets on AI, though Morgan Stanley, in a recent report, found that those initiatives are unlikely to drive meaningful growth acceleration yet in the near term for Workday.

“Many of the company’s AI offerings remain in the early stages of deployment, and adoption is likely to progress more slowly than investors expect given the compliance, governance and change-management requirements associated with back-office workflows,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Wood said last month.

The enterprise software company posted $2.5bn in revenue in its first quarter of fiscal 2027, up 13.5pc year-on-year. Revenue growth, however, has slowed in recent years. The company also repurchased around $1.6bn worth of common stock from shareholders during the quarter.

“Our core business is strong, our AI strategy is working, and we’re moving with the speed and focus required to lead,” company CEO and chair Aneel Bhusri said in the earnings release in May.

Last year, the company announced a €175m investment in Dublin with plans to create more than 200 specialised roles at the company around AI, machine learning, cybersecurity and engineering.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.