Human Resource Technology
HR Tech: Thoma Bravo’s $12.3 Billion Dayforce Buy, Workday’s Breach And Deals
Updated on Fri, Aug 22, 2025
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The digital age has redefined business processes, altering how organizations expedite various workflows—and one sector that was particularly refreshed by this revolution was human resources.
Technology in HR changed how businesses paid their employees, vendors, partners, and others, while also simplifying processes such as reimbursement, expense tracking, compliance, attendance, and more. Essentially, technology brought about an overhaul of HR operations across the board.
This was even further enhanced with the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology, which allowed HR tech companies to introduce a wide range of functions and features within comprehensively powerful platforms and applications.
As a result, such platforms are gaining prominence, drawing the attention of investors, big and small.
Now, American private equity and growth capital firm Thoma Bravo—which owns around $184 billion in assets under management, amassed through its 40-year history—is investing big to take over Dayforce, a global leader in human capital management (HCM) technology.
As per press releases published by both companies, Thoma Bravo has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Dayforce for $12.3 billion.
The deal will see Dayforce become a privately held company through an all-cash transaction, where stockholders will receive $70 per share in cash—representing a 32% premium over Dayforce’s closing share price on August 15.
“With Thoma Bravo, we are partnering with a truly special organization to accelerate our business—with our focus, resources, and product innovation all laser-pointed on leaping forward as the HCM leader for a world of work shaped by AI,” said David Ossip, Chair and CEO of Dayforce.
“Dayforce’s differentiated platform, global scale, and world-class team make it well-positioned to meet the growing and evolving needs of employers and employees around the world,” said Holden Spaht, a Managing Partner at Thoma Bravo.
The transaction has been approved by Dayforce’s board of directors and is expected to close in early 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
This follows Thoma Bravo’s sale of MeridianLink— a leading provider of modern software platforms for financial institutions and consumer reporting agencies, and one of its portfolio companies—to Centerbridge Partners—a global investment firm with deep experience investing in financial services and technology—in an all-cash transaction worth $2 billion.
On the other hand, HR sector bigwig Workday has also been busy over the past month.
On August 21, Workday—which describes itself as an AI platform for managing people, money, and agents—announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Paradox.
Paradox is a platform that uses conversational AI to simplify a candidate’s experience across every step of the job application journey, especially for high-volume frontline industries, which employ nearly 3 billion workers globally.
The acquisition will bring Workday an AI-powered talent acquisition suite capable of creating personalized, high-touch interactions powered by AI. It will also help its customers find, hire, and onboard diverse types of workers, from frontline to back office, with AI-driven talent discovery, candidate conversations, and more.
“By bringing Paradox's candidate experience AI agent into Workday, we're giving organizations a smarter, faster, and more engaging way to connect with candidates,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, president, Product & Technology, Workday. “Together, we'll help our customers move from transactional recruiting to transformative hiring that helps deliver talent, in less time, and with a better experience for everyone.”
The deal is expected to close in Q3 of Workday's fiscal year 2026, ending October 31, 2025.
On August 19, Workday revealed a strategic partnership with DailyPay, the leading On-Demand Pay platform, for it to become Workday’s Strategic Partner for On-Demand Pay in the United States and Canada.
The collaboration will enable employers to give their workers real-time access to their money as they earn it, which is crucial considering a study found that more than half of U.S. workers say they live paycheck to paycheck, while businesses have been reported to lose about a trillion dollars per year in turnover costs.
It also builds upon the fact that DailyPay's solution has been integrated with Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) and Workday Payroll since 2023.
“By giving employees access to their earned wages on their own terms, this partnership is helping to remove a major source of stress—and empowering a workforce that's more resilient, engaged, and productive,” said Matthew Brandt, SVP, Global Partners, Workday.
On August 14, Workday said it acquired Flowise, a low-code platform that enables simple development of AI agents—from simple chatbots to complex automated workflows.
This would allow the company to deliver unique benefits to its customers, including accelerated AI innovation; customization, controllability, and transparency across every part of their AI agents and workflows; and develop such agents responsibly, leveraging enterprise-grade observability, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and secure deployment options.
“By bringing Flowise into Workday and investing in its open-source foundation, we are empowering our customers and partners to build and deploy their own AI agents on Workday,” said Peter Bailis, Chief Technology Officer, Workday. “Flowise's powerful platform makes this process simple, intuitive, and transparent.”
All this comes as Workday Wellness was named a 2025 Top HR Product of the Year by HR Executive.
It also comes amid a major data breach scare Workday faces—one that it notified its customers about on August 15.
The data breach occurred due to a social engineering campaign that’s doing the rounds by targeting numerous organizations.
In Workday’s case, the bad actors were able to access some information from its third-party CRM platform. “There is no indication of access to customer tenants or the data within them,” read the release. Furthermore, Workday said it quickly cut access while inputting additional safeguards for the future.
However, Workday confirmed that the bad actors got away with some data—which it described as commonly available business contact information—which includes names, email addresses, and phone numbers, which could be used to “further their social engineering scams.”
“It’s important to remember that Workday will never contact anyone by phone to request a password or any other secure details. All official communications from Workday come through our trusted support channels,” concluded the release.
Do you think Thoma Bravo’s backing of Dayforce’s platform will help it take a lead in the HR technology market?
Do you think Workday’s acquisitions and partnerships will help it overcome its data breach snafu and lead in the industry?
Let us know in the comments below!
Technology in HR changed how businesses paid their employees, vendors, partners, and others, while also simplifying processes such as reimbursement, expense tracking, compliance, attendance, and more. Essentially, technology brought about an overhaul of HR operations across the board.
This was even further enhanced with the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology, which allowed HR tech companies to introduce a wide range of functions and features within comprehensively powerful platforms and applications.
As a result, such platforms are gaining prominence, drawing the attention of investors, big and small.
Now, American private equity and growth capital firm Thoma Bravo—which owns around $184 billion in assets under management, amassed through its 40-year history—is investing big to take over Dayforce, a global leader in human capital management (HCM) technology.
As per press releases published by both companies, Thoma Bravo has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Dayforce for $12.3 billion.
The deal will see Dayforce become a privately held company through an all-cash transaction, where stockholders will receive $70 per share in cash—representing a 32% premium over Dayforce’s closing share price on August 15.
“With Thoma Bravo, we are partnering with a truly special organization to accelerate our business—with our focus, resources, and product innovation all laser-pointed on leaping forward as the HCM leader for a world of work shaped by AI,” said David Ossip, Chair and CEO of Dayforce.
“Dayforce’s differentiated platform, global scale, and world-class team make it well-positioned to meet the growing and evolving needs of employers and employees around the world,” said Holden Spaht, a Managing Partner at Thoma Bravo.
The transaction has been approved by Dayforce’s board of directors and is expected to close in early 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
This follows Thoma Bravo’s sale of MeridianLink— a leading provider of modern software platforms for financial institutions and consumer reporting agencies, and one of its portfolio companies—to Centerbridge Partners—a global investment firm with deep experience investing in financial services and technology—in an all-cash transaction worth $2 billion.
On the other hand, HR sector bigwig Workday has also been busy over the past month.
On August 21, Workday—which describes itself as an AI platform for managing people, money, and agents—announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Paradox.
Paradox is a platform that uses conversational AI to simplify a candidate’s experience across every step of the job application journey, especially for high-volume frontline industries, which employ nearly 3 billion workers globally.
The acquisition will bring Workday an AI-powered talent acquisition suite capable of creating personalized, high-touch interactions powered by AI. It will also help its customers find, hire, and onboard diverse types of workers, from frontline to back office, with AI-driven talent discovery, candidate conversations, and more.
“By bringing Paradox's candidate experience AI agent into Workday, we're giving organizations a smarter, faster, and more engaging way to connect with candidates,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, president, Product & Technology, Workday. “Together, we'll help our customers move from transactional recruiting to transformative hiring that helps deliver talent, in less time, and with a better experience for everyone.”
The deal is expected to close in Q3 of Workday's fiscal year 2026, ending October 31, 2025.
On August 19, Workday revealed a strategic partnership with DailyPay, the leading On-Demand Pay platform, for it to become Workday’s Strategic Partner for On-Demand Pay in the United States and Canada.
The collaboration will enable employers to give their workers real-time access to their money as they earn it, which is crucial considering a study found that more than half of U.S. workers say they live paycheck to paycheck, while businesses have been reported to lose about a trillion dollars per year in turnover costs.
It also builds upon the fact that DailyPay's solution has been integrated with Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) and Workday Payroll since 2023.
“By giving employees access to their earned wages on their own terms, this partnership is helping to remove a major source of stress—and empowering a workforce that's more resilient, engaged, and productive,” said Matthew Brandt, SVP, Global Partners, Workday.
On August 14, Workday said it acquired Flowise, a low-code platform that enables simple development of AI agents—from simple chatbots to complex automated workflows.
This would allow the company to deliver unique benefits to its customers, including accelerated AI innovation; customization, controllability, and transparency across every part of their AI agents and workflows; and develop such agents responsibly, leveraging enterprise-grade observability, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and secure deployment options.
“By bringing Flowise into Workday and investing in its open-source foundation, we are empowering our customers and partners to build and deploy their own AI agents on Workday,” said Peter Bailis, Chief Technology Officer, Workday. “Flowise's powerful platform makes this process simple, intuitive, and transparent.”
All this comes as Workday Wellness was named a 2025 Top HR Product of the Year by HR Executive.
It also comes amid a major data breach scare Workday faces—one that it notified its customers about on August 15.
The data breach occurred due to a social engineering campaign that’s doing the rounds by targeting numerous organizations.
In Workday’s case, the bad actors were able to access some information from its third-party CRM platform. “There is no indication of access to customer tenants or the data within them,” read the release. Furthermore, Workday said it quickly cut access while inputting additional safeguards for the future.
However, Workday confirmed that the bad actors got away with some data—which it described as commonly available business contact information—which includes names, email addresses, and phone numbers, which could be used to “further their social engineering scams.”
“It’s important to remember that Workday will never contact anyone by phone to request a password or any other secure details. All official communications from Workday come through our trusted support channels,” concluded the release.
Do you think Thoma Bravo’s backing of Dayforce’s platform will help it take a lead in the HR technology market?
Do you think Workday’s acquisitions and partnerships will help it overcome its data breach snafu and lead in the industry?
Let us know in the comments below!
First published on Fri, Aug 22, 2025
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