Aneel Bhusri

Aneel Bhusri
Bhusri in 2013
Aneel Bhusri
Born	14 2, 1966
Birthplace	Pittsford, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Business executive, venture capitalist
Title	Chairman and CEO, Workday
Known for	Co-founding Workday
Education	MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Awards	EY Entrepreneur of the Year (Northern California, 2013)
Website	[https://www.workday.com/en-us/company/about-workday/leadership/aneel-bhusri.html Official site]

Aneel Bhusri (born February 14, 1966) is an American business executive, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist who co-founded Workday, a cloud-based enterprise software company specializing in human capital management and financial management applications. Bhusri has served as Workday's chairman since the company's inception in 2005 and has held the role of chief executive officer during multiple periods of the company's history, most recently returning to the CEO position in February 2026 following the departure of Carl Eschenbach. In addition to his work at Workday, Bhusri is a partner at Greylock Partners, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Before founding Workday, Bhusri held senior roles at PeopleSoft, where he rose to the position of vice chairman. His career has spanned software development, corporate leadership, and venture investing, and he has been recognized for both his entrepreneurial achievements and his philanthropic commitments, including signing the Giving Pledge in 2018.

Early Life

Aneel Bhusri was born on February 14, 1966, in Pittsford, New York, a suburb of Rochester. He is of Indian American heritage. Bhusri grew up in the upstate New York region before pursuing his higher education. Details about his parents and early family life are not extensively documented in public sources, though his later philanthropic activities and public statements have reflected an awareness of his Indian American background and community ties.

Education

Bhusri attended Brown University for his undergraduate studies. He subsequently earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His time at Stanford proved formative for his career in technology and venture capital, as the university's proximity to Silicon Valley provided extensive networking opportunities and exposure to the technology industry. At Stanford, Bhusri developed relationships that would later prove instrumental in his career, including connections within the venture capital community and the enterprise software sector.

Career

PeopleSoft

Bhusri's career in enterprise software began at PeopleSoft, one of the major enterprise resource planning (ERP) software companies of the 1990s and early 2000s. At PeopleSoft, Bhusri worked closely with the company's founder, Dave Duffield, and rose through the management ranks to become vice chairman of the company's board of directors. During his tenure, PeopleSoft grew into one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world, competing directly with SAP and Oracle in the market for human resources, financial, and supply chain management software.

Bhusri's time at PeopleSoft came to a dramatic end when Oracle Corporation launched a hostile takeover bid for the company in 2003. The protracted takeover battle lasted approximately 18 months and became one of the most closely watched corporate acquisition struggles in technology industry history. Oracle's bid, initially priced at $16 per share, was repeatedly raised and fiercely resisted by PeopleSoft's management and board, including Bhusri and Duffield. Oracle ultimately completed the acquisition in January 2005 for approximately $26.50 per share. The experience of losing PeopleSoft to Oracle's hostile takeover had a significant impact on both Bhusri and Duffield, and it directly motivated them to found Workday later that year.

Greylock Partners

Following the Oracle acquisition of PeopleSoft, Bhusri joined Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm with a long history of investments in technology companies. As a partner at Greylock, Bhusri focused on investments in enterprise software and technology companies. His role at Greylock allowed him to maintain a broad view of trends in the software industry, particularly the shift toward cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery models that was beginning to gain momentum in the mid-2000s.

Bhusri has maintained his partnership at Greylock even while serving in executive roles at Workday, giving him a dual perspective as both an operator and an investor in the enterprise technology sector.

Founding of Workday

In 2005, Bhusri and Dave Duffield co-founded Workday, Inc., with the vision of building enterprise software applications delivered entirely through the cloud. The founding of Workday was a direct response to the Oracle acquisition of PeopleSoft; Bhusri and Duffield saw an opportunity to build a new generation of enterprise applications that leveraged cloud computing, a technology paradigm that was still in its early stages at the time.

The company initially focused on human capital management (HCM) software — the same market segment that had been PeopleSoft's core strength — but designed its platform from the ground up for cloud delivery rather than on-premises installation. This approach represented a significant departure from the established enterprise software model, in which large organizations purchased software licenses and installed applications on their own servers. Workday's cloud-native architecture allowed for more frequent updates, lower upfront costs for customers, and a subscription-based revenue model.

Workday established its headquarters in Pleasanton, California. The company grew steadily through the late 2000s and early 2010s, attracting major enterprise customers for its HCM and financial management applications. In its early years, Workday competed against entrenched incumbents including Oracle, SAP, and other established ERP vendors, differentiating itself through its cloud-first approach and user interface design.

Workday's Growth and Public Offering

Workday went public in October 2012, with its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO was one of the most anticipated technology public offerings of that year, and the stock price surged significantly on its first day of trading, reflecting investor enthusiasm for cloud computing companies. The successful IPO validated the strategic bet that Bhusri and Duffield had made on cloud-based enterprise software.

Under Bhusri's leadership as co-CEO alongside Duffield, and later as sole CEO, Workday expanded its product portfolio beyond HCM to include financial management, planning, analytics, and other enterprise applications. The company grew its customer base to include many of the world's largest organizations across industries including healthcare, financial services, education, technology, and government.

As described in a BusinessWeek profile, the founding of Workday and its subsequent growth represented a notable chapter in the ongoing competition within the enterprise software industry, as cloud-based vendors challenged the established on-premises software model.

CEO Transitions

Bhusri served as co-CEO of Workday alongside Dave Duffield for several years. In this arrangement, Bhusri handled the day-to-day operational management of the company while Duffield, who was older and had founded multiple companies, served in a more strategic capacity. Bhusri subsequently served as sole CEO before transitioning the CEO role to Carl Eschenbach, a former VMware executive, while retaining his position as chairman of the board.

In February 2026, Workday announced that Eschenbach was stepping down as CEO and that Bhusri would return to the chief executive role. The company stated that Eschenbach had led Workday through a period of global expansion and operational scale. Bhusri's return as CEO was framed in the context of Workday's strategic push into artificial intelligence, as the enterprise software industry was undergoing significant transformation driven by AI technologies.

Shortly after Bhusri's return, Workday reported its fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 earnings, which showed solid financial performance but included subscription revenue guidance for fiscal 2027 that fell below some analysts' expectations. The company reported fourth-quarter earnings of 55 cents per share on the earnings call. On the earnings call, Bhusri expressed confidence in the company's AI strategy, stating that "no amount of vibe coding" could replace Workday's enterprise software platform, as the company pushed forward with AI agent capabilities.

Board Service

In addition to his roles at Workday and Greylock Partners, Bhusri served as a member of the Intel Corporation board of directors from 2014 to 2019. His board service at Intel provided additional visibility into the semiconductor and hardware sectors that underpin the enterprise technology industry.

Personal Life

Bhusri resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is of Indian American descent and has been active in philanthropic efforts connected to both the broader community and causes related to the Indian American community.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhusri donated $1 million to the San Francisco COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, which provided resources to communities affected by the coronavirus pandemic in San Francisco. The donation was part of a broader wave of philanthropic activity from Bay Area technology executives in response to the public health crisis.

In 2018, Bhusri and his wife signed the Giving Pledge, the philanthropic commitment organized by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in which wealthy individuals pledge to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes during their lifetimes or in their wills. Bhusri was among fourteen new signatories announced that year.

Bhusri has been recognized by the San Francisco Chronicle as a Visionary of the Year nominee for his contributions to the Bay Area technology community and his philanthropic activities.

Recognition

Bhusri has received several notable awards and honors for his work in enterprise software and entrepreneurship:

• In 2013, Ernst & Young named Bhusri an Entrepreneur of the Year award winner in Northern California, recognizing his role in building Workday into a major enterprise software company.

• Bhusri was recognized with the Great Place to Work CEO Leadership Award, reflecting Workday's consistent high rankings in employee satisfaction surveys and workplace culture assessments. Workday has appeared on Fortune magazine's list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For on multiple occasions under Bhusri's leadership.

• The San Francisco Chronicle nominated Bhusri as a Visionary of the Year, citing his business leadership and community involvement.

• Bhusri has been profiled in Forbes, which has tracked his career and the growth of Workday from its founding through its emergence as a major public company.

Legacy

Aneel Bhusri's career is closely associated with the broader transformation of the enterprise software industry from on-premises installations to cloud-based delivery. Along with Dave Duffield, he played a central role in demonstrating that large enterprises would adopt cloud-based systems for core business functions such as human resources and financial management — a proposition that was considered uncertain when Workday was founded in 2005.

The founding narrative of Workday — born from the ashes of PeopleSoft's hostile takeover by Oracle — has become one of the notable entrepreneurial stories of the modern technology industry. As described by Forbes, Bhusri and Duffield turned the setback of losing PeopleSoft into the foundation for building a new company that would become one of the leading enterprise cloud software vendors.

Bhusri's dual role as both a venture capital partner at Greylock and an operating CEO at Workday has been unusual in the technology industry, providing him with perspectives from both the investment and operational sides of the business. His return to the CEO role at Workday in 2026, in the context of the industry's rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, underscored his continued centrality to the company's strategic direction more than two decades after its founding.

His philanthropic commitments, including his signing of the Giving Pledge, have positioned him among a cohort of technology industry leaders who have committed to using their wealth for charitable purposes.