What to expect from Workday Rising USA 2025

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With Workday Rising USA 2025 once again staged in the expansive bowels of San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the event this year takes place from September 15-18.

The human resources, workplace management and finance platform company has additional capabilities in planning, spend management and analytics. Workday will this year focus on (spoiler alert, you know what’s coming next) agentic AI-driven developments that manifest themselves in the future of work.

Workday then, today, describes itself as an AI platform for managing people, money and agents.

With over 400 sessions covering finance, HR (or HCM if you prefer) and AI itself, Workday will welcome some 30,000 finance, HR and IT professionals. The sessions gravitate around central key themes for Workday and span product demos, customer case studies, labs and best‑practice deep dives.

Keynotes will feature Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach and co‑founder Aneel Bhusri. A guest keynote will also be presented by Brené Brown, a woman who describes herself as a researcher, storyteller and Texan who’s spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy.

Also on stage, we’ll see chief marketing officer Emma Chalwin and president of product and technology Gerrit Kazmaier to discuss how Workday is driving business forward in the age of AI.

Illuminate Agents Looking at what Workday calls AI‑driven innovation at scale, the company is hosting a number of sessions designed to “unpack”, clarify and validate Workday’s suite of Illuminate Agents. These are AI-powered software services that automate workflows like financial audits, contract negotiation and forecasting etc.

Illuminate Agents include:

Contingent Sourcing Agent: Accelerates temporary hiring by identifying talent open to contingent roles. Contract Intelligence Agent: Enhances legal and business decision-making by reviewing contracts to identify risks & and fees. Contract Negotiation Agent: Expedites negotiations by drafting applicable contract language & detecting risks. Plus also… Workday’s Document Driven Accounting Agent, Frontline Agent, Self-Service Agent (powers employee and manager self-service, assisting with complex tasks and executing everyday actions) and Supplier Contracts Agent. “Workday continues to effectively target critical business outcomes in productivity, compliance and insights with agentic AI. This is one more significant step in establishing AI agents as practical and impactful tools for business transformation,” said Mickey North Rizza, group vice-president, IDC Enterprise Software, earlier this year in line with the launch of the above services. “Customers need measurable business value and clear time-to-payback and Workday’s innovations with agentic AI will resonate strongly with organisations looking to truly transform the future of work and fully take advantage of the power of AI.”

The company will also host product roadmaps & demos with previews of agentic AI developments across finance and HR tools.

Partner solution extensions also showcased are expected to cover processing, automation, planning and compliance. Labs will focus on the whole Workday platform with workshops aligned for architects and software application developers who are building, integrating and scaling Workday AI agents using Workday Extend, platform APIs, integration frameworks and AI agent templates.

Workday for developers This year, we can centralise on more key callout points for developers. The company says that software engineers can expect guidance on how to use Workday Extend and the firm’s Agent system of record technology to build bespoke agents or integrate third-party AI via APIs.

There will be hands-on labs with a chance to get code samples related to agent creation, integration best practice, automation of back‑office processes and secure configuration techniques. Workday’s own developer community will be in attendance alongside independent software vendors to talk about development and integration strategies.

Workday Extend enables users to build and deploy new business capabilities for finance and human resources, with reduced complexity. The technology is a takes ideas “from alpha to beta to done” (says the company) with low- and no-code developer tools.

“This year’s Workday Rising is a celebration of our brightest innovators – our forward thinking customers – who are pushing the limits of what’s possible in finance, HR and AI,” said Emma Chalwin, chief marketing officer, Workday. “This event is where innovation meets action, showcasing how Workday, our customers and our partners are defining the future of work with agentic AI that puts humans at the centre.”

This show will feature a meaty chunk focused on building and managing agentic AI services (at scale… Workday will always add “at scale” here) and look at architecture and process frameworks for deploying Illuminate Agent. Alongside demos of AI‑powered financial close, forecasting and planning tools… the company will also showcase AI services for HR analytics & talent strategy. This involves processes to combine both AI and human insights for recruiting, performance and workforce planning. Developer labs will cover agent creation, API integration, security compliance and platform extensibility.

What the users say “Workday Rising is a unique event that speaks to both finance and technology leaders in equal measure,” said Arnulfo Sanchez, chief accounting officer, DataStax. “By previewing new product features and learning how automation, forecasting and AI-driven planning are reshaping finance, I always leave with new ways to drive efficiency and elevate our impact.”

John Bruce, vice president, people innovation, OneDigital is equally upbeat, he says that the most valuable thing about Workday Rising is connecting with other customers. To him, it doesn’t matter if a company is in retail, healthcare or manufacturing, he insists that really, the bottom line is… we’re all using the same tools to solve problems.