Workday CEO Eschenbach is leaving, with co-founder Aneel Bhusri returning as CEO.

Enterprise Resource Planning software company Workday announced Monday that it has named Carl Eschenbach as its new CEO he was coming down and leave the company’s team, working immediately. Co-founder and former CEO Aneel Bhusri returns as CEO.

Eschenbach joined Workday in December 2022 as Co-CEO along with Bhusri and has served as the sole CEO of the company since February 2024. Bhusri, who has led the company since 2009 – sometimes as Co-CEO, sometimes as sole CEO – has served as the company’s executive chairman since 2024.

Workday confirmed to TechCrunch that Bhusri is returning to the position permanently, rather than taking the helm in search of someone else.

Workday says it made this leadership change to focus on its next topic, which, unsurprisingly, is AI.

“We are now entering a very important period in our history,” Bhusri said in a press release on Monday. “AI is a bigger change than SaaS – and it will define the next generation of market leaders. I am excited to return as CEO, working closely with our presidents Gerrit Kazmaier and Rob Enslin, and I am excited about the opportunities that lie ahead of us.”

last february, Labor Day dropped 8.5% of its volumeor 1,750 people, which Eschenbach said at a time when the company needed a new way of working in the age of AI.