Workday's AI strategy appears to feature a heavy dose of acquisitions. The company said that it is acquiring Paradox, a startup that features a candidate experience agent to work through the job application process. The Paradox acquisition came just days after it acquired Flowise, a platform to build AI agents and automate workflows.
The latest acquisition landed as Workday reported better-than-expected second quarter earnings.
According to Workday, Paradox will give it an AI-driven talent acquisition suite. Paradox provides agent that provides responses, schedules and provides 24/7 support for recruiting processes. Paradox has powered more than 189 million AI-assisted candidate conversations that have boosted employee conversion rates. Here's a look at how Paradox reaches candidates.
- Workday acquires Flowise to speed up building AI agents, automated workflows
- Workday aims to be system of record for AI agents, digital labor
- Workday Enters the Era of AI
- Employee Experience Platforms: Workday Peakon
The plan going forward is to add Paradox to the Workday Recruiting suite. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in Workday's fiscal third quarter, weren't disclosed.
Paradox has integrations with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors and Indeed to name a few. The company focuses on the experiences for candidates, recruiters, hiring managers and franchises. Paradox's core industries are retail, restaurants, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and financial services.
Recruiting has become a hot area. SAP recently acquired SmartRecruiters to bolster SuccessFactors.
Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:
"Right when you thought Workday had settled on an organic approach to talent acquisition, it acquires Paradox. Granted, Paradox is a good and complimentary acquisition, but with the Workday move and the recent SAP acquisition one thing is clear - the gloves have come off in the talent acquisition game. And it makes sense - as the winners of talent acquisition can redefine how talent management overall will be reinvented in the AI era."
Workday also reported better-than-expected second quarter earnings that were 9 cents a share above Wall Street estimates. The company reported second quarter net income of 84 cents a share on revenue of $2.35 billion, up 12.6% from a year ago. Non-GAAP second quarter earnings were $2.21 a share.
Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday, said the company saw strength in AI consumption and international business.
Workday CFO Zane Rowe said the company is raising its fiscal 2026 subscription revenue guidance to $8.815 billion, up 14% from a year ago.
As for the outlook, Workday projected third quarter subscription revenue of $2.235 billion, up 14.1%.
Key takeaways from Carl Eschenbach on the earnings conference call:
- "With Workday Recruiting, Hiredscore and now Paradox, we will be able to deliver an incredibly powerful AI Powered talent acquisition suite, helping customers find, hire and onboard every type of worker for every type of work."
- "This quarter, roughly 30% of our net new deals were full suite, with that number rising to 50% or more in industries like edu and healthcare."
- "Salesforce, a long time HCM customer, went live on Workday financial management and accounting center in the quarter. They're all in on Workday by unifying their HR and financial data on our platform. They're getting entirely new insights about their business to support their innovation and growth."
- "AI is front and center in nearly every customer conversation. More than 30% of our customer deals and more than 75% of our net new deals included one or more of our AI products."
- "At Workday Rising in a few weeks, we will unveil exciting AI and platform innovations, partnerships and new ways to make it easier for customers to access and get value from our AI solutions."
- "developers are embracing Workday's tools including extend and our AI APIs to expand the Workday footprint in new industries, markets and territories. We now have more than 100 Marketplace apps live on Workday Marketplace, which has doubled since the start of fiscal 2026."
