Workday Ventures, the corporate venturing vehicle formed by US-based enterprise human resources and finance management software provider Workday, announced a $250m fund yesterday.
Workday launched the unit in 2015 under the leadership of Adeyemi Ajao, its vice-president of technology products strategy, with a focus on data and machine learning technologies as applied to the enterprise.
However, Ajao left the company in 2016 and the unit has been relatively quiet over the past 18 months. The new fund would appear to represent a soft relaunch.
The new Workday Ventures will add enterprise-applicable technologies such as blockchain, augmented and virtual reality to its machine learning and artificial intelligence brief.
The fund is being run by Leighanne Levensaler, senior vice-president of corporate strategy, and Workday co-president Mark Peek as managing directors. Workday has also opened up its platform to its customers and partners.
The increased investment in corporate venturing coupled with the drive to bring an external ecosystem to the platform would suggest Workday is following a similar strategy to the one that has been so successful for another enterprise software company, Salesforce, and its Salesforce Ventures unit.
Aneel Bhusri, Workday’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “Our investment in Workday Ventures reinforces our commitment to staying at the forefront of enterprise innovation.
“Combining the leadership of Leighanne and Mark with our deep understanding of the enterprise market will position Workday Ventures as an industry leader, supporting the growth of our portfolio companies, community and business.”