Workday Launches Ventures Fund Focused on Data Science and Machine Learning

PLEASANTON, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 14, 2015) - Workday, Inc. (NYSE: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources,today announced Workday Ventures, the company's first strategic fund focused on identifying, investing, and partnering with early to growth stage companies that place data science and machine learning at the core of their approach to enterprise technology. The first set of companies that Workday Ventures has invested in includes Jobr, Metanautix, ThinAir, and Unbabel.

"The use of data science and machine learning to tackle business questions will be the biggest transformation to enterprise technology since the emergence of the cloud," said Dan Beck, senior vice president, product marketing and technology strategy, Workday. "Just as Workday led the transition from client-server to cloud applications, we are at the forefront of this data-driven shift -- investing in our own architecture and applications as well as emerging companies and innovators through Workday Ventures."

Workday Ventures is a pillar of Workday Next, a new company initiative that spotlights Workday's people, ideas, investments, and technologies that are transforming how businesses make decisions, succeed, and grow. Additional pillars and respective focus areas for Workday Next include: Workday Labs (user-centric design, mobile-first strategy, design-thinking methods), Workday Sigma (data science, data engineering, analytics), and Workday Stack (core platform services, scalability).

Workday Ventures -- Investment Partnerships Built on Data Science and Machine Learning
Workday Ventures will work with promising, early stage companies to fuel the next generation of enterprise applications. In addition to receiving funding to accelerate growth, portfolio companies will have the opportunity to gain strategic guidance from Workday's executives, board members, engineers, customers, and partners. Workday Ventures will focus on companies that apply data science and machine learning principles in the areas of analytics, applications, security, and platform technologies.

Workday believes data science and machine learning are the next major transformative areas of growth in enterprise technology. Partnering with innovative, early stage companies will enable Workday to exchange valuable knowledge with other industry experts, identify complementary technologies in their earliest development, and continue to influence and shape the next wave of enterprise applications to help customers grow.

The first wave of Workday Ventures investments include:

• Jobr is the first mobile-only job aggregator that lets people easily browse and apply for jobs without the hassle of a formal job search. With a swipe to the left or right, Jobr learns and recommends the best positions for candidates from more than a million job postings that a user can instantly apply for. Every swipe informs Jobr's powerful recommendation engine that scans hundreds of signals to continually refine the relevancy of jobs for an individual and increase their chance of being hired.
   
• Metanautix simplifies the big data supply chain by enabling users to combine and search a multitude of unstructured, structured, and relational data sources with a single analytics engine using industry standard SQL. Its flagship product, Metanautix Quest™, is a data compute engine that provides fast answers from data of any size, source, or location, whether it is on-premises, in the cloud, or both. With the recently released Quest 2.0, Software-Defined Data Marts enable teams to rapidly and securely reach across enterprise data silos to solve a specific business problem.
   
• ThinAir is the first intelligent security platform built to allow everyone in the enterprise -- administrators and employees alike -- to take control over their most sensitive data in a way that enhances, not hinders, productivity. Taking a new approach to security based on machine-driven patterns, the ThinAir platform offers a revolutionary set of automated protection capabilities and alerts to keep data safe and under control.
   
• Unbabel is a web translation service that combines machine learning and human crowdsourcing to provide accurate, human quality translations. By pairing Artificial Intelligence and human translation, Unbabel is able to provide fast results at a fraction of the industry price. Unbabel aims to help businesses succeed by breaking down language barriers that prevent them from expanding globally.
   

Additional Comments on the News
"Data is the lifeblood of Jobr's recommendation engine, fueling our ability to surface the right job opportunities and candidates for our customers," said TJ Nahigian, CEO, Jobr. "To have the opportunity to sit down with Workday's top data scientists and receive ongoing counsel from them about how we can maximize the platform's data processing capabilities has been invaluable. As we go forward, Workday will be a key partner in helping Jobr scale its platform and successfully address the enterprise market."

"Metanautix helps enterprises bridge their data silos to enable better decisions for the business," said Theo Vassilakis, CEO, Metanautix. "Having Workday in our corner will provide Metanautix with a better understanding of our customers' data supply chain, from on-premises to the cloud, and enable us to gain greater insight into integrating human resources data and other sensitive information."

"Workday is the ideal investment partner to help ThinAir achieve its growth objectives," said Tony Gauda, CEO, ThinAir. "As an advisor, they have provided us with important feedback about how ThinAir can work in different environments, prompting us to add capabilities that have improved the solution. We aspire to be one of the world's leading cloud-based security providers, and we feel that Workday's expertise and experience in the cloud will play a key role in helping us achieve that goal." 

"Unbabel is thrilled to have Workday as an investor in our web translation service," said Vasco Pedro, CEO, Unbabel. "As a leader in providing machine learning and data science driven capabilities, Workday is sure to add to our industry expertise as we grow our platform to meet the needs of global organizations."

Additional Information

• Read the blog post: Introducing Workday Next: A Spotlight on Workday's Tech Advancements and Investments from Workday Staff Writers
• Watch the Workday Ventures video to hear more from Workday executives and its portfolio company CEOs
• Read the blog post spotlighting members of Workday's Sigma team: Workday Acquires Upshot, Strengthens Data Science Expertise from Workday Staff Writers

About Workday
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. Founded in 2005, Workday delivers financial management, human capital management, and analytics applications designed for the world's largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Hundreds of organizations, ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises, have selected Workday.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the expected activities of Workday Ventures and Workday's business opportunities and strategies. The words "believe," "may," "will," "plan," "expect," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2015 and our future reports that we may file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

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