Workday is making significant moves in the enterprise AI integration space with its acquisition of Pipedream, an iPaaS platform that connects over 3,000 applications. The acquisition signals Workday’s commitment to enabling agentic AI capabilities that can act on enterprise insights across multiple systems.
In an exclusive interview at Workday Rising EMEA in Barcelona, Gabe Monroy, SVP and GM of Workday’s platform division, revealed the strategic thinking behind the Pipedream acquisition and how it fits into the company’s broader AI and platform expansion strategy.
Pipedream acquisition: Building the integration foundation
Pipedream is an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) that competes with established players like Zapier, Make, and IFTTT. The platform provides API automation capabilities with a significant emphasis on AI-powered workflows. What made Pipedream particularly attractive to Workday was its extensive ecosystem of 3,000+ active connectors and strong adoption among startups and technology companies building AI applications. Monroy emphasized that Workday intends to maintain Pipedream’s value to the broader ecosystem: “We have a lot of interest in making sure that that base of connectors continues to get used, continues to have quality and continues to be exercised by folks in the ecosystem. And that’s going to be driving a lot of our decision making as we roll forward together.”
The acquisition hasn’t closed yet, but Monroy confirmed Workday’s commitment to investing in Pipedream’s continued development. The platform will not become an internal-only tool but will remain available to existing customers and the startup ecosystem that has built integrations on top of it.
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Agentic AI strategy: From insights to actions
The Pipedream acquisition directly supports Workday’s vision for agentic AI, which focuses on leveraging enterprise insights to trigger actions across connected systems automatically. Monroy provided a concrete example of this vision in action:
“We have many users on Workday who are looking to write a performance review for their employees, and as part of that, they need to go gather feedback from their teammates in their company. Today you’d have to search through the org chart and figure out which teammates you’d want to select for feedback. What if instead you could write an agent that would understand how to go out to Jira or Notion or Asana and be able to pull who this individual has been working with on their most recent project and then route the feedback request to those individuals?”
This use case demonstrates how Workday envisions agents operating: understanding context within Workday’s HR system, reaching out to external project management tools through Pipedream’s connectors, and automatically coordinating processes that currently require manual effort.
Flowise Integration: The open-source component
Pipedream isn’t Workday’s only recent acquisition in the integration and AI space. The company also acquired Flowise, an open-source agent builder with approximately 46,000 GitHub stars. Monroy noted that maintaining momentum in the open-source community is critical to Workday’s strategy, as ecosystem interest and Workday’s internal interests are aligned. Together, Flowise and Pipedream provide Workday with both the agent orchestration layer and the connectivity fabric needed to execute complex, multi-system workflows driven by AI. It also bought Sana earlier this year, which delivers Workday the AI interface it needs.
Strategic acquisitions
Workday is acquiring startups at a rapid pace, they all seem to complement each other in different spaces but are all centered around AI. The portfolio of acquisitions now includes Sana, Flowise, Pipedream, Paradox, and HiredScore. When asked if more acquisitions are coming, Monroy avoided the question but emphasized the need to execute on existing promises: “Hard to ever say we’re done. You’re right that we made a lot of moves in the space and I’m eager to make sure we’re following through on those promises for customers. But as I said, we’re also accelerating our internal pace of development.”
Addressing multi-platform agent governance
One challenge that Workday’s CTO, Peter Bailis, acknowledged in August was the difficulty of managing and governing agents that operate across multiple platforms. With Pipedream acting as an integration hub, Workday could theoretically position itself as a control plane for agent orchestration, similar to Salesforce’s approach with Mulesoft Fabric.
However, Monroy indicated that Workday’s current focus is more tactical: “My focus at the moment is on making sure that we’re solving for Workday specific use cases… Personally, I’m less interested in figuring out how we better position as a control plane for agents. I think if we do a good job solving specific use cases for customers in the realm of HR and finance, I think the rest is going to come.”
This means Workday will prioritize demonstrable value in its core domains over broader platform positioning, at least in the near term.
Competition and innovation velocity
Workday faces increasing competition from multiple directions. Salesforce is building out HR capabilities and could introduce a complete HCM solution to compete directly with Workday. Meanwhile, startups and agentic AI companies are targeting specific use cases that enterprise platforms have traditionally owned. Monroy acknowledged the competitive landscape but emphasized that Workday’s focus is on customers and innovation speed. He is a lot more careful than Peter Bailis, the CTO of Workday, who is full of ambition and wants to compete with all the bigger names out there.
Also read: Workday wants to become the leading AI platform: realistic or overly ambitious?
Workday Go: Expanding to SMB markets
During Workday Rising EMEA there were a few smaller announcements. Beyond AI and integration capabilities, Workday announced Workday Go, a solution designed for small to medium-sized businesses. Historically, Workday has been positioned as an enterprise-grade platform for large organizations. Workday Go represents a strategic expansion into a much larger addressable market. The offering includes payroll partnerships that make it easier for medium-sized enterprises to adopt Workday’s HR and finance capabilities. Monroy highlighted that Workday has already been making progress in the medium enterprise segment, and this announcement represents a doubling down on that direction.
Importantly, Workday intends to bring the same AI capabilities being developed for large enterprises to SMB customers through Workday Go, democratizing access to advanced enterprise technology.
EU sovereign cloud: Meeting regulatory requirements
At Workday Rising EMEA the company announced its EU sovereign cloud offering, built on AWS infrastructure. The solution addresses European data residency, locality, and compliance requirements, particularly regarding AI regulations such as the EU AI Act. Monroy described customer feedback as “overwhelmingly positive,” with many viewing sovereign cloud capabilities as a deal breaker for deploying enterprise-grade AI in Europe. The solution guarantees that data stored in the environment stays on EU sovereign soil and complies with regional regulatory requirements. Workday chose AWS as its sovereign cloud partner, despite some debate in the industry about whether AWS’s approach, which is establishing a European entity still ultimately owned by Amazon in the US, truly meets sovereignty requirements. Monroy expressed confidence that the solution will meet customer needs and regulatory requirements, noting that Workday is working closely with AWS on the implementation.
Workday expects the EU sovereign cloud to drive two types of adoption: existing large Workday customers who have been requesting a sovereign environment, and new customers in highly regulated industries who couldn’t previously deploy Workday due to data residency requirements. Monroy believes the offering will accelerate Workday adoption in the European market.
2026 is a crucial year for Workday
Workday’s announcements at Rising EMEA, but also Rising US earlier this year, paint a picture of a company moving quickly to compete in an increasingly crowded enterprise platform market. Workday is spending a lot on acquisitions and new developments. The success of this strategy will depend on execution, specifically on how quickly and effectively Workday can integrate the acquired technologies and deliver value to customers. Workday seems aware of this challenge and is committed to maintaining momentum. For startups currently using Pipedream, the message is reassuring: Workday intends to maintain and invest in the platform as an open ecosystem. For Workday customers, the acquisitions and the acceleration of software development and new AI features can make the platform much more interesting in the coming years.