Shares of Workday surged nearly 18% Thursday after Reuters reported that private equity giant Silver Lake is in talks to take the cloud-based human resources and finance software company private, in what would rank among the largest software buyouts in history.

Before the report, Workday carried a market value of around $43 billion. The stock closed at $206.45, pushing its market value to roughly $51.1 billion, according to Yahoo Finance's report on the Reuters story. Sources familiar with the matter said Silver Lake and Workday have held discussions in recent months, but cautioned the talks remain ongoing and there is no guarantee a deal materializes.

A familiar playbook

Silver Lake could bring in additional investors to help finance a deal, which would represent one of the firm's largest technology bets to date, per Benzinga. The firm has run this playbook before: last year, Silver Lake teamed up with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners on a roughly $55 billion take-private deal for video game maker Electronic Arts.

Workday's stock has fallen about 15% so far in 2026 and sits more than 40% below its 2024 peak, as investors have grown skeptical of legacy enterprise software's staying power in an era of rapidly advancing AI tools that threaten to automate away much of the HR and finance back-office work Workday's platform is built to manage.

The buyout speculation landed on an otherwise strong day for markets broadly. The S&P 500 has been riding a wave of cooling inflation data toward record territory this week, and Thursday's Workday pop added to a busy stretch of dealmaking chatter and earnings surprises across the tech sector, per the Motley Fool's market wrap.

What's next

Neither Workday nor Silver Lake has publicly confirmed the talks, and any transaction of this size would likely require months of negotiation, financing arrangements and regulatory review before a deal is formally announced. Wall Street will be watching Workday's next earnings call for any hint of board-level movement on a sale.