Kiv Moodley, Workday. Photography: Karolina Komendera

DeepSeek innovation aside, the world’s biggest technology firms are doubling down on their AI investments, and collectively plan to spend around $300 billion on AI in 2025, according to company data. This is having a halo effect in the wider business world. Bloomberg reports that mentions of AI adoption on fourth quarter earnings calls have reached a record high, mainly among software firms, but also among financial, media and entertainment companies. Workday, which provides cloud-based HR and finance solutions, is no exception, and has been rolling out AI-infused products over the last six months.

The company launched its Illuminate platform in September, which uses GenAI to save time with common HR and finance tasks. As part of this package, it also announced AI agents for recruiting, expenses, optimisation and succession planning. With recruiting, the agent will find and recommend staff for open roles and will automate job descriptions, find likely candidates and schedule the interview. To manage this proliferation of agents, in February, it announced a new product called the Agent System of Record. The system will manage the secure deployment of the agents.