US-based human resources software provider Workday launched a corporate venturing unit called Workday Ventures yesterday that will invest in companies developing data science and machine learning technology.
Workday has not so far disclosed the size of either the fund or the investments it is planning to make in individual portfolio companies, stating only that Workday Ventures will target early and growth-stage companies that apply data and machine learning to analytics, applications, security and platform technologies.
The unit will be run by Adeyemi Ajao, who joined Workday as its vice president of technology and strategy when the company acquired Identified, a social media big data and analytics developer he had founded, in February 2014.
Workday, which had previously invested in business planning software developer Anaplan and financial planning software provider Tidemark, also revealed the unit’s first four portfolio companies, all based in the US, though it declined to include individual investment amounts. They are:
- Jobr, a mobile-only employment marketplace frequently described as ‘Tinder for jobs,’ which raised $2m in a July 2014 seed round featuring Lerer Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Lowercase Capital, The Hive, Tekton Ventures and Structure Capital;
- Metanautix, the developer of a data analytics engine that emerged from stealth in August 2014 with $7m of funding from Sequoia Capital, Stanford Endowment, and Shiva Shivakumar;
- Unbabel, the creator of an online translation service that combines machine learning with human translation, and which raised $1.5m in a July 2014 seed round backed by internet company Digital Garage and a host of angel investors.
- ThinAir, an intelligent security startup that is bringing machine-driven patterns to data security.
Workday Ventures will operate as part of Workday Next, a company-wide programme being instituted to further the company’s technology and innovation. Different elements of Workday Next will focus on design, data and core platform technology.