Workday faces growth threat as customers use Anthropic, Microsoft agents

Workday spent years becoming the place where companies keep their most sensitive people and money data. Now some customers are reaching that data with AI agents Workday didn’t build. Tools powered by Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s agent platforms can query Workday records directly, skipping Workday’s own AI products entirely. The details Workday sells cloud software for human resources and finance. Its pitch for the AI era has centered on its own agents, which it has rebranded under the name Sana. The problem is that external agents can do much of the same work. Agents running on Anthropic’s Claude, or built with Microsoft’s Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry, can read and act on Workday data without customers ever touching Workday’s AI tools. The industry term for this risk is disintermediation. Put simply, a middle layer moves in between a vendor and its customers, and the vendor becomes plumbing. So far, Workday’s own numbers don’t look like a company being sidelined. As of Q2 2026, over 5,500 customers were using Workday’s AI agents, a jump of more than 35% quarter-over-quarter. Its AI SKUs also contribute close to $600 million in annual recurring revenue. That figure refl...