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Workday’s stock has been in a slump. Its CEO is leaning into agentic AI.

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Workday is betting on artificial intelligence taking over more work.

While software stocks — including Workday’s — have sunk recently amid concerns over AI advancements, the company framed the technology as a growth opportunity on its Tuesday earnings call.

“We’re working really hard to figure out how do we improve business process execution for our customers at a lower cost,” CEO Anil Bhusri said.

“I think that’s where the agentic model fits in. What can agents do to replace human labor?” he said. “And then obviously longer term, we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do with those humans that are displaced.”

Bhusri’s remarks came after Workday reported revenue and net-income growth for the January-ended quarter. Shares fell around 10%, however, as the company projected slower subscription revenue growth than Wall Street expected for the fiscal year ahead.

A spokesperson for Workday said that Bhusri’s comments were not about Workday planning to replace its employees or its customers’ employees, but rather about industry-level shifts.

Bhusri said the outlook reflects that the AI products Workday is building aren’t expected to generate meaningful revenue until later in the year.

Workday’s stock drop marks another setback for the company, whose shares have slid in recent weeks amid a broader software selloff driven by fears that artificial intelligence could upend the industry.

The rout began in early February, tipping the sector into a deep bear market and spilling into adjacent industries as investors grapple with AI’s disruptive potential. Other companies affected include LegalZoom, Thomson Reuters, and Okta.

On the call, Workday didn’t directly address those concerns directly and instead emphasized its investments in agentic products to expand its footprint in HR and finance software.

Earlier this month, Workday said it was laying off about 400 employees, citing a need to realign its resources to meet its top priorities. A week later, Bhursi was renamed CEO, succeeding Carl Eschenbach, who stepped down.

Bhusri has held the top job three times before. He told analysts on Tuesday’s earnings call that while he’s optimistic about the business, he tends to set guidance cautiously and aim to outperform it.

“I don’t know if you know you remember me when I was a CEO before, but I do try to be conservative on the guide and then beat it,” he said.




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China’s economic slump isn’t stopping a billionaire boom in AI chips

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China’s deepening property crisis has crushed household wealth and dented the fortunes of some of its biggest tycoons — but a new class of AI-era billionaires is rising fast.

This year, the standout winners are coming from China’s red-hot AI chip sector.

On Wednesday, shares of MetaX Integrated Circuits Shanghai — a GPU startup founded by former AMD executives — skyrocketed as much as 755% on their first day of trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s tech-focused STAR Market, before closing up about 700%.

The surge catapulted its chairman and cofounder, Chen Weiliang, into one of China’s fastest-rising tech moguls. Chen’s stake in MetaX is worth about $6.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Other early insiders also saw eye-popping paper gains.

MetaX’s other two cofounders and co-chief technology officers, Peng Li and Yang Jian, hold stakes worth hundreds of millions of dollars after the blockbuster debut, according to Bloomberg’s calculations.

China’s AI rush

Chen’s rise follows that of another GPU entrepreneur, Zhang Jianzhong, the founder and CEO of Moore Threads Technology.

Earlier this month, Zhang’s net worth jumped to $4.3 billion after his company’s successful IPO, continuing a wave of investor enthusiasm for homegrown semiconductor players.

The richest figure in China’s AI chip scene is Chen Tianshi, a cofounder and CEO of Cambricon Technologies — a company retail traders have dubbed “China’s Nvidia.”

Cambricon’s Chen is now worth $22.5 billion, making him the country’s 16th-richest individual on Bloomberg’s list. He is the 115th richest person in the world.

These new fortunes reflect a sharp shift in investor sentiment.

Chinese AI and semiconductor stocks have been on a tear since the breakout of the China-made DeepSeek-R1 AI model released in January. The model helped spark a rally in local tech names and pushed the Hang Seng Tech Index up more than 20% so far this year.

Washington’s tightening export controls on advanced Nvidia chips also contributed to the boom.

Such restrictions on high-end AI processors have choked China’s access to cutting-edge US hardware and pushed Beijing to lean harder on domestic suppliers.

Still, China’s new AI billionaires remain far from the top of the country’s wealth rankings. The upper tier is still dominated by long-established tycoons.

In the top spot is Zhong Shanshan, the low-key bottled-water magnate behind Nongfu Spring, with a fortune of $68.1 billion, per Bloomberg.

Pony Ma, a cofounder and CEO of Tencent, ranks second with $66.5 billion — a fortune up 38% this year, on the heels of Tencent’s AI-induced rally — while ByteDance cofounder Zhang Yiming comes in third with $65.2 billion.




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