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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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What smart people in economics and business are saying about a viral report warning of an AI-driven recession and stock crash

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  • A viral research report warned of a stock market crash and double-digit unemployment by 2028.
  • The note sent software stocks sliding and rattled investors.
  • Critics said markets may be overreacting to a worst-case scenario thought experiment.

A research note warning that the AI boom could trigger a recession and a stock market crash spooked investors and sent software stocks sliding on Monday.

Citrini Research outlined a hypothetical 2028 scenario in which rapid AI adoption leads to mass white-collar layoffs and a collapse in consumer spending.

The report, which was published Sunday, went viral and amplified debate over whether AI is a productivity boom or a destabilizing shock.

Here’s what prominent economists and business leaders are saying about the note:

Claudia Sahm

Claudia Sahm, the chief economist of New Century Advisors and creator of the Sahm Rule recession indicator, raised concerns about the framing of the scenario.

“One concern with the Citrini scenario (and mirrored in the current moment) is the focus on destructive (left) rather than constructive (right),” Sahm wrote on X on Monday. “Maybe the latter takes longer, but it matters for the new equilibrium, too.”

In a follow-up post, she said that a labor market shock of the magnitude Citrini describes would likely trigger a forceful policy response.

“The labor market crisis they describe would generate a forceful fiscal/monetary response. They downplay that,” Sahm wrote. “The more likely scenario of gradual, limited job losses will be the hard one to get policymakers to focus and act.”

Michael Burry

Michael Burry.

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Michael Burry, the investor famous for predicting the 2008 housing crash and profiled in “The Big Short,” amplified the report to his millions of followers.

“And you think I’m bearish,” Burry wrote on X, linking directly to Citrini’s research.

His post included a chart from the Citrini report, titled “The AI Feedback Loop: A Non-Cyclical Disruption,” contrasting traditional recessions — which, it said, self-correct — with what Citrini describes as an AI-driven cycle with “no natural brake.”

Brendan Duke

Brendan Duke, a senior director for federal budget policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former senior policy advisor at the Biden-Harris White House National Economic Council, said many critics may be misreading Citrini’s premise.

“A lot of people have a hard time with the concept of a thought experiment,” he wrote on X.

However, Duke added that one underappreciated risk in the scenario is the financial market impact if “prime white collar borrowers who nobody ever thought would default… defaulting” becomes a reality — referring to the report’s suggestion that white-collar layoffs could cascade into prime mortgage and private credit stress.

Jeff Dorman

Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca, framed the response to the report as a lesson in investor psychology.

“The biggest takeaway from the virality of this Citrini doom porn is that fear sells,” Dorman wrote on X, referring to Monday’s stock market sell-off.

He said that markets and media often reward dramatic crash predictions, even if they rarely materialize.

“There are thousands of successful macro newsletters that you pay money to subscribe to, and all of them tell you to buy gold, build a bunker, and short stocks,” he wrote, adding that high-profile recession forecasters frequently get attention despite repeated false alarms.

Deepak Shenoy

Deepak Shenoy, founder of Capitalmind, compared the AI recession warning to past resource-scarcity warnings.

“This is the viral post that currently spooks everyone,” Shenoy wrote in an X post.

He pointed to 2008-era warnings that oil reserves were running out — fears that did not ultimately dismantle the energy industry.

“Doomsday porn is addictive,” Shenoy wrote. “AI based end of everything is the WWF of the world now, fun to watch but is mostly fake.”

Michael Bloch

Michael Bloch, a partner at VC firm Quiet Capital, published a rebuttal titled “The 2028 Global Intelligence Boom.”

He said that even if AI keeps improving rapidly, it doesn’t have to end in a crash — it could make the economy richer.

“What if our AI bullishness continues to be right… and what if that’s actually bullish?” he wrote on Substack this weekend.

Bloch said investors are confusing pain in parts of tech — like SaaS and middleman-style businesses — with a broader economic collapse, and that cheaper services could leave households and startups with more money to spend.




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Dan DeFrancesco

What the software stock sell-off says about your job security

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Everyone’s freaking out about AI again, which means it’s time to rethink how secure your career is.

BI’s Ana Altchek has a piece about how to future-proof your job since the only certainty in the job market appears to be more uncertainty.

A market meltdown in software stocks has people on edge this time. The characters might have changed, but the plot is still the same.

A new tool (an AI plugin from Anthropic) launched to automate work (tracking compliance and reviewing legal docs) leads to a sell-off among leaders in the space (legal-software stocks).

We can debate whether the reaction was warranted (more on that below), but this narrative isn’t going away. AI companies will keep automating different types of work, leaving the companies in that space scrambling and their employees nervous.

Ana spoke to experts about different ways to get ahead, from auditing your job to the skills you can lean into to build more career immunity. Overall, the idea is not to get caught flat-footed.

For more on the inner workings and culture of the business world, check out Ana’s weekly series “This Week at Work,” and subscribe to our workplace roundup newsletter, Work Shift. (You’re still required to read this every day, though. No excuses.)

One group has felt particularly safe amid the AI chaos.

Trade workers have been sitting pretty as panic rises among the white-collar workforce. A recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll found 75% of Americans agree that “hands-on skills and practical experience matter more than formal degrees when it comes to career success.”

And even more (78%) agreed “the stigma around trade or blue-collar work is declining” because hands-on skills are becoming so valuable.

The leaders of the AI revolution, from Elon Musk to Jensen Huang, have also praised tradework as a much more resilient career path.

That is likely the case in the short term. But down the road, all bets are off. Tesla is aggressively pushing into humanoid robots. OpenAI is also quietly scaling its robotics project.

There’s a long way to go, with most robots being more flop than pop. But the potential and interest in developing the space is there, as was evident at this year’s Davos. And some see the eventual economic impact of physical AI being far greater than that of software.

Because eventually, AI will come for all of us if we’re not willing to adapt.




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