Workday and C1.ai Partner to Tackle Enterprise AI Agent Security

Workday, Inc. announced a partnership and integration with C1.ai on October 13, 2026, at the Workday Rising 2026 conference in Las Vegas to secure the operations of both human workers and autonomous AI agents. The collaboration addresses a growing enterprise challenge where organizations deploy automated systems across connected apps without adequate centralized access controls.

Traditionally, organizations managed employee access across hundreds of applications through manual service tickets, spreadsheets, and periodic reviews as workers joined, moved, and left. The rapid adoption of AI agents has accelerated this identity challenge, creating security and compliance risks when agents lack appropriate controls, visibility, and removal mechanisms.

What are the statistics behind enterprise AI adoption?

C1.ai research indicates that 95% of large U.S. companies already run autonomous agents, but Deloitte's State of AI research highlights that only 21% of companies report having a mature way to govern them.

Workday already operates at the core of enterprise HR, finance, and IT, maintaining what it calls an Agent System of Record. Meanwhile, C1.ai provides an agentic identity platform that connects to systems such as email, CRM, code repositories, finance systems, and cloud infrastructure.

Who is involved in the partnership?

Gerrit Kazmaier, President, Product and Technology at Workday, and Alex Bovee, CEO and Co-founder of C1.ai, led the announcements from the corporate side. Financial and legal advisors were also deployed for the transaction: BofA Securities served as financial advisor and Orrick as legal advisor to Workday, while Qatalyst acted as financial advisor and Ashurst Perkins Coie as legal advisor to C1.ai.

Customer references cited in the C1.ai source material included Tim Lisko, Director of Product and Infrastructure Security at DigitalOcean; Marc Grayson, Director of IT; Mark Hillick, CISO; Matthew Sullivan, Infrastructure Security Team Leader; and Dheeraj Malik, Director of Corporate Applications at Zscaler.

What do the executives and customers say?

Gerrit Kazmaier stated that today’s companies run on a combined workforce of people and AI agents. “With C1.ai, we’ll help secure that workforce by managing and enforcing exactly who—and what—has access to connected apps and systems, giving each person and agent the right access at the right moment to make work easier, safer, and more compliant,” Kazmaier said according to Workday and PR Newswire releases.

Alex Bovee noted that enterprises cannot secure the AI era using yesterday's IT tickets. “Workday is the operational heart of the enterprise, and by bringing C1.ai’s identity governance directly into that core, we’ll be able to manage access for every human and agent in real time—making work faster without making it less secure,” Bovee said.

Customer Tim Lisko of DigitalOcean stated that having a tool that can execute access controls iteratively and repeatedly without manual inputs enables very real security control. Dheeraj Malik of Zscaler added that C1.ai operates so smoothly it feels like an extension of the Zscaler team rather than a vendor.

When does the transaction close?

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday's fiscal year 2027, which ends on January 31, 2027. Closing remains subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Specific regulatory approvals required, beyond general customary closing conditions, were not detailed in the source texts, and the financial purchase price or valuation amount was not disclosed.