Carl M. Eschenbach is the Chief Executive Officer of Workday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. With more than 35 years of experience in the technology sector, he has held senior leadership roles at VMware and Sequoia Capital. Carl currently serves on the boards of several major tech firms and is recognized for his strategic leadership and transformative impact on enterprise software.
Carl Eschenbach earned an Electronics Technician diploma from DeVry University, an institution known for its focus on technical and business education. His academic background provided him with a strong foundation in engineering and technology. This early education equipped him with the skills and knowledge that would later support his success in executive roles at major technology companies and in the venture capital space.
Carl Eschenbach began his notable career at VMware, where he spent 14 years serving in various executive roles, including President and Chief Operating Officer. He later joined Sequoia Capital as a Partner, advising emerging technology companies. In 2022, he joined Workday as Co-CEO and became sole CEO in 2024. Carl Eschenbach also serves on the boards of Zoom, Snowflake, UiPath, and other leading tech firms.
Workday integrates AI across HR and finance, enhancing productivity, decision-making, and employee experience with innovative, data-driven intelligent solutions.
Illuminate AI Platform: Workday Illuminate is its next-generation AI platform, leveraging vast HR and finance datasets, as well as generative AI, to accelerate content creation, automate workflows, and orchestrate complex business processes, thereby increasing productivity and enabling strategic decision-making.
Workday AI Assistant: Workday Assistant is an AI-powered chatbot that provides employees with real-time, conversational guidance across HR and finance tasks, streamlining processes and allowing employees to focus on higher-value work.
Generative AI Content: Workday leverages generative AI to quickly draft job descriptions, knowledge articles, and talent summaries, enabling HR teams to produce personalized and multilingual content in a fraction of the time previously required.
AI Skills Intelligence: Workday’s skills intelligence uses machine learning to enhance workforce diversity and mobility. The system recommends jobs, matches skills, and expands candidate pools while ensuring equity and transparency in talent management decisions.
Automated Contract Recognition: Workday’s AI analyzes and corrects contracts for faster and more accurate revenue recognition, flagging discrepancies and proposing corrections to prevent downstream accounting errors and save valuable time.
Developer Copilot AI: Workday Extend’s Developer Copilot uses generative AI for rapid text-to-code conversions, streamlining custom app development on the Workday platform by enabling human-machine teaming and enhancing developer productivity.
Predictive Workforce Analytics: Workday’s AI-powered predictive analytics models analyze historical workforce data to forecast trends, supporting proactive HR planning, improved resource allocation, and alignment with organizational goals.
Personalized Employee Development: AI-driven features consolidate feedback, skills, and performance history to generate personalized employee growth plans, enabling managers to retain and develop talent throughout the organization effectively.
AI Recruitment: Workday streamlines recruitment and onboarding with intelligent candidate matching, predictive analytics, and virtual assistants, enhancing hiring accuracy, speeding up onboarding, and improving the overall candidate experience.
AI Adoption for Everyone: Workday's "Everyday AI" initiative emphasizes organization-wide AI adoption, peer training, and staged rollouts to integrate AI tools, such as chatbots and coding assistants, into daily work, ensuring a robust employee adoption rate for AI.
Carl Eschenbach's financial success is impressive, with a net worth exceeding $201 million as of 2025. As the CEO of Workday Inc., he owns over 699,000 shares, valued at $167 million. Additionally, he serves as a high-level executive at VMware and a director at Palo Alto Networks, holding millions of dollars' worth of stock in both companies. His astute insider trading, while diversifying his holdings across top tech companies, is a demonstration of his keen business sense and investment strategy.
Carl Eschenbach has established the company to serve over 65 million total users under contract, ensuring the company's growth across numerous industries. At VMware, Carl played a pivotal role in the company's inception as a global entity. His time at Sequoia Capital was instrumental in the success of many high-growth startups. Carl has mastery in challenges, innovation, and operational excellence, making him one of the top tech executives in the industry.
As of July 2025, there are no publicly documented controversies directly involving Carl M. Eschenbach, CEO of Workday. His leadership has been characterized by strategic decisions aimed at scaling the company and integrating AI technologies.