Aneel Bhusri (born February 14, 1966) is an American business executive. He is the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

(CEO) of Workday. He is also a partner at

Greylock Partners Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in consumer and enterprise software. History Greylock wa ...

and was a member of

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

's board of directors between 2014 and 2019. Bhusri has been a billionaire since 2014; as of 2021 he has a

net worth Net worth is the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an individual or institution minus the value of all its outstanding liabilities. Financial assets minus outstanding liabilities equal net financial assets, so net w ...

of $3.1 billion.

Early life

Aneel Bhusri was born in an

Indian-American Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from India. The terms Asian Indian and East Indian are used to avoid confusion with Native Americans in the United States, who are also referred to as "Indians" or "Am ...

family of Punjabi descent, in

Pittsford, New York Pittsford is an incorporated town in Monroe County, New York. A suburb of Rochester, its population was 30,617 at the time of the 2020 census. Formerly part of the town of Northfield, Pittsford was settled in 1789 and incorporated in 1796. T ...

on February 14, 1966. He was educated at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, receiving a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. He has an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

from

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business is the Postgraduate education, graduate business school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective ...

. His first job after college was as a corporate finance analyst at

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in 42 countries and more than 80,000 employees, the firm's clients in ...

Career

In 1993, Bhusri became the director of planning at

PeopleSoft PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provided human resource management systems (HRMS), financial management solutions (FMS), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise performance management (EPM) softw ...

,Angela Mehta, "Venture Profile: Aneel Bhusri, Greylock"
SterlingHoffman
' retrieved October 20, 2014 then primarily a

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ' ...

software company. Later, working for

David Duffield David Arthur Duffield (born 21 September 1940) is an American billionaire businessman in the software industry. He is the co-founder and former chairman of PeopleSoft, and co-founder and CEO emeritus of Workday, Inc., two publicly traded enterp ...

, with whom he went on to co-found Workday,George Anders, "Snubbed By Oracle, Workday's Duffield And Bhusri Hit Jackpot"
Forbes
' September 16, 2013 he became responsible for product strategy and

marketing Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

. In 1999, he became vice chairman of the company, serving in that role until the takeover by

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

in 2004. In the meantime,

had developed ERP, CRM, and other offerings, in addition to

Human Resource Management Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize e ...

. Also since 1999, Bhusri has been a partner at

, a venture capital firm which has backed companies including

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Groupon Groupon, Inc. is an American global e-commerce marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services in 13 countries. Based in Chicago, Groupon was launched there in November 2008, launching ...

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

Tumblr Tumblr (pronounced "tumbler") is a microblogging and Social networking service, social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and is owned by American company Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content ...

and

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( , an abbreviation of its original name, "Air Bed and Breakfast") is an American company operating an online marketplace for short-and-long-term homestays, experiences and services in various countries and regions. It acts as a ...

. At Greylock he has been an investor in cloud technologies, with an emphasis on applications, data center infrastructure and middleware, and serves on the boards of a number of companies in which Greylock has invested, including

Cloudera Cloudera, Inc. is an American data lake software company. History Cloudera, Inc. was formed on June 27, 2008 in Burlingame, California by Christophe Bisciglia, Amr Awadallah, Jeff Hammerbacher, and chief executive Mike Olson. Prior to Cloude ...

and

Pure Storage Pure Storage, Inc. is an American publicly traded technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States. It develops all-flash data storage hardware and software products. Pure Storage was founded in 2009 and developed its ...

Workday

In 2003,

made a $13 billion bid in a hostile corporate

takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are publicly listed, in contrast to the acquisi ...

attempt of

. This and later offers were rejected by PeopleSoft's

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

. Despite a

U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of federal laws and the administration of justice. It is equi ...

suit A suit, also called a lounge suit, business suit, dress suit, or formal suit, is a set of clothes comprising a suit jacket and trousers of identical textiles generally worn with a collared dress shirt, necktie, and dress shoes. A skirt su ...

to block the takeover, on the grounds of

anti-trust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust ...

infringement, in December 2004, Oracle announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately $10.3 billion. In 2005, Workday was co-founded by

and Bhusri with funding from

. Workday sells software and services using the

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

model. Bhusri is the

(CEO) at Workday. He is also a member of the company's board of directors, and served as chairman of the board from 2012 until May 2014. In April 2020, Bhusri donated $1 million to the Give2SF fund, a donation drive to help residents and businesses in San Francisco affected by the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, he was ranked No. 359 on the

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

400 list of the richest people in America. In January 2024, Bhusri will step down as CEO at Workday and Carl Eschenbach will take over as CEO. Currently, Bhusri and Eschenbach are working together as co-CEOs. In 2024, Bhusri will serve as full-time executive chair and chair of the board of directors.

Media appearances

Bhusri was interviewed by

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily ...

on th
Masters of Scale
podcast, where he talked about interviewing his first 500 employees at Workday to shape its award-winning company culture.

Awards

* 2013 EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award Recipient * 2020 Great Place to Work CEO For All Leadership Award

References

External links

WorkdayGreylock
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bhusri, Aneel 1966 births Living people American technology chief executives American company founders American computer programmers Businesspeople from New York (state) Brown University alumni Brown University School of Engineering alumni American people of Punjabi descent American people of Indian descent Henry Crown Fellows American billionaires 21st-century American philanthropists Stanford University alumni Stanford University trustees