Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Workday's first quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question and answer session towards the end of the call. During the Q&A, please limit your questions to one. I will now hand it over to Justin Furby, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Welcome to Workday's first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings conference call. On the call, we have Aneel Bhusri, our CEO, Gerrit Kazmaier, our President, Product and Technology, Rob Enslin, our President and Chief Commercial Officer, and Zane Rowe, our CFO. Following prepared remarks, we will take questions. Our press release was issued after close of market and is posted on our website, where this call is being simultaneously webcast. Before we get started, we want to emphasize that some of our statements on this call, particularly our guidance, are based on the information we have as of today and include forward-looking statements regarding our financial results, applications, customer demand, operations, and other matters. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially.
Please refer to the press release and the risk factors in the documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our fiscal 2026 annual report on Form 10-K, for additional information on risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in such statements. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Workday's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for or in isolation from, GAAP results. You can find additional disclosure regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP results, in our earnings press release, in our investor presentation, and on the investor relations page of our website.
The webcast replay of this call will be available for the next 90 days on our company website under the investor relations link. Additionally, the prepared remarks of this call and our quarterly investor presentation will be posted on our investor relations website following this call. Our second quarter fiscal 2027 quiet period begins on July 15th, 2026. Unless otherwise stated, all financial comparisons in this call will be to our results for the comparable period of our fiscal 2026.
With that, I'll hand the call over to Aneel.
Thanks, Justin, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. It's great to be with all of you. I now have a full quarter under my belt since returning as CEO, and I truly feel the energy building at Workday every day, both around our path forward on AI and the company as a whole. We're in New York City this week for the Sana AI Summit, where we brought together some of the brightest minds in AI with our top customers. It's an incredible event, and it was great to see a few of you there. A few weeks ago, we hosted our top industry analysts at our annual Innovation Summit. Typically a skeptical group, they came away generally impressed by the pace of innovation and by our renewed focus on operating like a startup. One of them even called it the reinvention of Workday.
Their reaction to our vision and execution around AI told me that we are absolutely on the right path. Our Q1 results. We had a great first quarter. In fact, it was the best first quarter of new ACV growth in five years, anchored by the strength of our core business and the traction we're seeing with AI. Following slower ACV growth in fiscal year 2026, we're seeing momentum once again building in the business. I'm confident in our ability to drive accelerated new ACV bookings this year as we bring new agents to market for our customers and drive even greater adoption. Last quarter, I mentioned I came back to help Workday lead again during the biggest technology transformation of our lives. After being back for three months, I have even more conviction that this is Workday's moment to lead.
To do it, we need to operate differently than we have been. In coming back, I was very focused on returning Workday to a startup orientation and a growth mindset. I watched a lot of Steve Jobs videos where he talked about his management approach when he returned as CEO. What struck me most wasn't about what Apple built after he returned, which was obviously incredible. It was more about his management philosophy. There was one interview in particular from All Things D where he called Apple the biggest startup in the world and said it was the startup mindset he brought back. Fewer layers, faster decisions, the best ideas winning, more ownership. We're trying to emulate that startup playbook. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, and apropos that we were in New York City this week, it's like deja vu all over again.
We're going back to our founding principles. I've said before, chapter four is a refounding moment for Workday. With AI, we're essentially a startup again. We're a startup sitting on one of the most important enterprise platforms ever built and the trust of more than 11,500 customers. We need to embrace that mindset. It's all about focus and trust, clear ownership, and the best ideas winning. That's how we're leading Workday now, and it's how Dave and I led the company early on. As part of this mindset, we've simplified our priorities to 3. Number 1, build and deliver the AI future. Number 2, grow with our customers. Number 3, live our values. We've also streamlined ownership across the organization so every Workmate knows exactly how their work connects. Fewer things done with greater focus.
A dedicated AI agent factory building agents across all of our application areas. Clear ownership and accelerated development of our AI APIs. We've got the right people to do it. We have some incredible leaders from the companies we've acquired now in key roles at Workday. One of them is Joel Hellermark, the founder of Sana, who we named our Chief AI Officer just today. That's by design. These leaders know the startup mindset, and they're helping Workday move faster and stay focused. I've also thought a lot about how Workday wins in this new chapter. I've met with dozens of customers since I've been back, and I keep hearing the same thing. Not one of them is looking to replace Workday with something they're building internally or from a startup.
Instead, they were looking to us first for AI solutions for the HR and finance worlds, and hopefully IT in the future. It's really our opportunity for the taking, but we need to execute flawlessly and with speed. We have all the requisite components, one data model for all customers, one security model, and a true cloud architecture. Our business process framework gives AI the rails it needs to operate safely and accurately inside the enterprise. Over the past several years, we have completely rewritten our tech platform to be AI native in the way we manage transactions, reports, and the UI requests. That's basically the foundation we've spent 21 years building, and now it's been modernized for AI, down to the core OMS. We're delivering the results as well. Q1 was our first quarter with both Sana and Paradox fully integrated.
With Sana, we're giving our customers a completely new Workday experience. It's a new front door to Workday that is simple and modern. The Sana platform is also the foundation for everything we're building in AI going forward. Joe and his team have created something remarkable, and the integration has gone further and faster than I anticipated. We've already proven that customers trust Workday deliver AI through agents we acquired. This is the year we proved that they also buy the agents we're building organically, agents that only Workday can build, and Gerrit will share more on that momentum in a moment. While there are some who believe that AI can disrupt Workday, I see something different, our chance to once again be a disruptor with AI clearly driving that disruption.
To that point, Gerrit will talk about Sana for ITSM and the new travel agent we announced today at the Innovation Summit. These are early examples of what it looks like when we use Sana to rapidly innovate on top of our data and context. What ties all this together is one simple truth. Customers don't want AI for AI's sake. They want AI that adds value to how they run their businesses. Our early adopter customers are already seeing that, and they want more from Workday. To close, I am confident that Workday is ready for this AI moment. Our core business is strong, our AI strategy is working, and our execution is accelerating, starting with Q1. Seeing the agents Gerrit's building and the success Rob is having selling and deploying them with customers, I couldn't be more confident in our path ahead and ability to lead.
Gerrit, over to you.
Awesome. Thanks, Aneel, hello to everyone. For AI, the world model, it is like the Holy Grail. Today, a large language model, it just predicts the next token in a sentence. The world model, it is the step change needed for it to understand the physics of its real environment. It's about how things actually work and the laws that govern them. On Workday's platform, we have over 80 million users under contract and approximately 1.4 trillion transactions annually. That is giving us a set of data and context that no other competitor can replicate. For more than 20 years, we have been on the journey of building the world model of work. Here is what we have done.
We have mapped the patterns of work at scale, who approves what, how money moves, how people get hired, assessed, developed, and scheduled for their work, and the policies, the processes, and the exceptions around them. Here is the key insight for you. This world model of work, it is the best context engine for agentic HR, finance, and beyond. It unlocks unmatched enterprise-grade accuracy for AI automation. All of this is adding up to agents that our customers can trust to perform actual work inside real business processes. You can see that clearly in the impact that they are delivering already for our customers. In Q1, for example, we have supported 14 million hiring processes with our Recruiting Agent. That is up 44% year-over-year. We have analyzed more than 1.1 million contracts with Contract Intelligence. That is up 53% from last quarter.
Now, that is the world model of work at work. While we're driving all of this amazing impact, the pace of innovation here at Workday, it is accelerating. We now have 20 organic agents in GA or EA, and the number of customers using these agents has more than doubled quarter-over-quarter, with over 4,000 customers using at least one organically developed agent as of today. Here are just a few highlights for you. Deployment Agent is now being used in our first end-to-end customer projects. It is designed to deliver an estimated 30% reduction in implementation hours and cost. In our next wave of AI-driven projects, we are aiming to get that reduction up to 50%. Here is why this is so important.
This reduction in time and in costs of deployment, it is removing a historic barrier to choose Workday, particularly in the mid-market segment. Customers like the University of Arkansas System, GE Vernova, and Mohegan, they are using Deployment Agent across their Workday systems to instantly resolve issues and answer questions. To admins, they can spend their time moving their projects forward. We are seeing a super fast takeoff of our Self-Service Agent. This quarter, our first Fortune 500 customers are expected to go live on Self-Service Agent. We will take another big step at the end of this month. All HCM and finance customers on our AI terms of service, they will get Sana for Workday and our Self-Service Agent as a part of their existing contract. Let's talk about our accelerating AI business momentum.
In Q1, our new ACV from agentic AI products, it grew more than 200% year-over-year. We are also approaching $500 million in ARR from our agentic AI solutions. We are not stopping here. AI, it lets us break free from the narrow definition of legacy business applications that lead to frustrating user experience breaks and outsized spend for so many companies out there. With Sana as our AI platform, we are pushing the boundaries of HR and finance and IT with new AI solutions. Just today, here in New York City, we announced two new agentic solutions from Workday that prove this out. Sana Travel Agent brings business travel planning, booking, and expenses into a single conversational experience. With more than 5 million expense reports processed monthly on Workday, and much of it is travel, this agent, it takes on the heavy lifting.
It can automatically handle bookings, receipts, policy checks, and expenses. Employees get a more seamless travel experience, and finance teams, they get real-time visibility into current spend and future travel commitments. We have also announced Sana for ITSM, which automates workflows for employee on and off-boarding, access changes, and everyday IT requests. Many service requests start with employee lifecycle changes that Workday already knows about, like joining a company, moving across teams, or even exiting. With the key data, the work identity, the org chart, job profiles, and so much more running on Workday, we inherently know the chain of approvals, the required policies, and the right work context. That allows us to simplify and automate ITSM requests at a whole new level. Lastly, let's take a look at the Workday platform and our AI momentum there.
Workday Extend Pro enables customers to build their own AI-powered solutions on our platform, taking advantage of our AI APIs. In Q1, Extend Pro continued to be one of the fastest-growing products, with new ACV nearly doubling year-over-year. Here is our approach. At Workday, we embrace the AI ecosystem, and we design for openness. Our customers and our partners, they can build their own AI innovations without locking them in into a single vendor stack. We are giving our customers choice and three clear paths to run agents on the Workday platform, designed to meet them wherever they are. First, our customers can build their own AI agents with Workday's agent-ready tools. These are a new class of Workday connectors and APIs that are purpose-built for autonomous consumption by AI agents at enterprise scale and available via open standards like MCP.
Second, our customers can plug in Workday agents into their agentic front door using the A2A protocol. Already in Q1, we have made Self-Service Agent available in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini. Third, they can use Workday's agents in Sana for the fully optimized work experience, where Workday provides the reasoning, the context, and the ultimate AI user experience. It's the AI workbench for work. These options give our customers and partners the flexibility to adopt AI the way that best fits their business. Stay tuned for our upcoming developer conference, DevCon, the first week of June in Las Vegas. There, we will announce new Workday AI platform innovations. Here is the bottom line of all of this.
Enterprise AI starts to pay off when agents can perform actual work with the same approvals, security, policy, and guardrails that govern the rest of the business. That's exactly the future we are delivering for our customers. Powerful AI agents harnessing the world's model of work built on an open platform.
With that, over to you, Rob.
Thank you, Gerrit. Hello, everyone. We're proud that more than 11,500 customers around the world trust Workday for the most important parts of their business, from payroll to closing the books. As Anil said, growing with our customers is one of our top priorities. You see that in our results. In Q1, expansions once again drove roughly 60% of our subscription revenue growth with customers like Queensland University of Technology, Rakuten Group, and Bank OZK expanding their relationships with Workday. We also continued to go deep in federal and had a record turnout at our 4th annual Fed Forum in D.C. last month with nearly 600 attendees. In Q1, we kicked off the next phase of our contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also in Q1, net new business drove 40% of our subscription revenue growth.
We formed new relationships around the world with key brands, including Harley-Davidson, Del Monte, Australian Gas Infrastructure Group, Smiths Group, Heartland Dental, and AC Hotels by Marriott. State and local government was also a standout this quarter, where we signed statewide deals with the State of Delaware and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Turning to AI, the numbers this quarter tell a clear story. More than a quarter of new ACV from customer base expansions came from AI, and expansion deals that included AI were over 50% larger on average. The pattern is consistent. Customers who adopt our AI go deeper on the platform. The University of Arkansas System is a great example. They have 21 institutions, including research universities, community colleges, and an academic medical center, all on a single Workday instance. They process over 2 million transactions a month.
In Q1, they used our Deployment Agent to cut support tickets and uncover configuration insights that once required manual searches. Deployment Agent has significantly increased the operational velocity and allowed them to scale Workday with less reliance on external consultants. Our Flex Credits pricing model is quickly gaining traction. With Flex Credits, we've unified AI monetization across Workday. One model for agents, AI APIs, and Data Cloud. It makes AI adoption simpler for our customers. While it's still early in the journey, we're seeing a growing mix of AI monetization coming through Flex Credits, and as we bring our new agentic innovations and acquired agents onto the model throughout the year, this will become a more meaningful part of how we grow. We're also continuing to make progress outside of North America. In APAC, we expanded our operations into Vietnam, which opens up a brand-new market for Workday.
This strategic expansion is made possible by 5 global and regional partners, all dedicated to meeting the growing local demand in Vietnam for digital transformation. In EMEA, we launched an EU-based data residency in Frankfurt. This was a significant milestone for European customers with data sovereignty requirements. We're also expanding Workday GO globally to help these customers get up and run faster in a more standardized way. EMEA is now our second-largest region for medium enterprise, which we define as 500 to 3,500 employees. New ACV in that segment grew by more than 50% in the quarter. Workday GO is now available in France, Germany, and the UK, with an additional 14 countries available through our partner network. Speaking of partners, our ecosystem continues to be a meaningful driver of our growth. In Q1, roughly 30% of net new ACV was sourced by partners.
We also hit several milestones worth mentioning, including Insperity HRScale solution is now generally available, bringing Workday to the PEO market for the first time to deliver full-service HR for growing businesses. Workday Recognition, powered by Achievers, is live, and we expanded our Workday Wellness program with Morgan Stanley at Work and PerkSpot. The momentum this quarter was broad across expansions, net new, AI, and international. We are growing with our customers and continuously evolving to meet their needs.
Now over to Zane to share more on the financials.
Thanks, Rob. Thank you to everyone for joining today's call. As Rob mentioned, our results this quarter demonstrate ongoing customer adoption across our platform as enterprises around the globe turn to Workday to manage and empower their most important assets. Subscription revenue in Q1 was $2.354 billion, up 14%. Professional services revenue was $188 million, resulting in total revenue of $2.542 billion, growth of 13%. From a geographic perspective, U.S. revenue in Q1 totaled $1.89 billion, up 13%, and international revenue totaled $649 million, up 16%. Twelve-month subscription revenue backlog, or CRPO, was $8.81 billion at the end of Q1, growing 15.5%. This was driven by continued customer expansion, bolstered by our AI solutions and growth from new customers. Total subscription revenue backlog at the end of Q1 was $27.29 billion, up 11%. Gross revenue retention rates remained strong at 97% in the quarter.
Net customer expansion rates remained consistent with what we observed last quarter, contributing roughly 60% of our subscription revenue growth for Q1. Non-GAAP operating income for the first quarter was $809 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 31.8%. Margin strength was the result of the revenue outperformance, combined with favorable spend versus expectations. Q1 operating cash flow was $696 million, growth of 52%, and free cash flow for the quarter was $616 million, growth of 46% and in line with our expectations. We repurchased $1.6 billion of our shares during the quarter and had $1.3 billion in remaining authorization as of April 30. We ended the quarter with $4.4 billion in cash and marketable securities. Our headcount as of quarter end stood at 20,834 workmates around the globe.
Now turning to guidance. We remain focused on driving adoption of our agentic solutions across HR and finance while expanding into adjacent market opportunities, providing a foundation for long-term growth. We are pleased with our performance in Q1, and we are reiterating our FY 2027 subscription revenue outlook of $9.925 billion-$9.950 billion, growth of 12%-13%. We expect Q2 FY 2027 subscription revenue to be approximately $2.455 billion, growth of 13%. We anticipate CRPO to increase between 13.5% and 14.5% in Q2. For Q2, we expect professional services revenue of $180 million. As Aneel mentioned, we are streamlining how we operate the business and are focused on investing in areas with the highest returns. We are increasing our FY 2027 non-GAAP operating margin guidance to 30.5%. For Q2, we expect a non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 30%.
We expect Q2 GAAP operating margin to be approximately 19 percentage points lower than our non-GAAP operating margin and the full-year FY 2027 GAAP operating margin to be approximately 18-19 points lower. The FY 2027 non-GAAP tax rate is expected to be 19%. We are maintaining our FY 2027 operating cash flow outlook of $3.45 billion, and we continue to expect FY 2027 capital expenditures of approximately $270 million, resulting in free cash flow of $3.180 billion, growth of 15%. In closing, we remain focused on the potential for AI to transform our HCM and finance solutions. While still early in this journey, we are beginning to see the benefits from AI to our business model across both the top and bottom line, and we are executing on a framework to drive long-term growth while expanding GAAP and non-GAAP margins.
We look forward to updating you on our progress in the quarters ahead. With that, I'll turn it back over to the operator to begin Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one a second time. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. To be able to take as many questions as possible, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Again, it is star one to join the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Excellent. Thank you guys for taking the question and congratulations on a really nice start to the fiscal year. A lot of really bullish signals that we're getting on sort of that AI adoption. I wanted to ask a broader question, and maybe, Aneel, I'll ask you to kind of do my job for me because I'm trying to create a broader argument. You said at the beginning of your remarks that nobody is looking to sort of rebuild the core Workday system and that core transactional engine. I agree, and I think most investors agree with that statement. I think where more of the concern is the additional functionality that Workday can be selling to these organizations, which kind of drives growth, that there's a new competitive dynamic there and maybe a new value proposition there.
I think where investors perhaps are getting it wrong is assuming that because the cost of software development is coming down with code generation tools, there's a significant change in sort of the TCO of getting that additional capability from Workday versus building it themselves. I think what investors get wrong is they're looking at it too narrowly in terms of what creates that TCO. Can you help me kind of round out that equation of when your customers are looking for those innovations, obviously the innovations have to be there, but they're also looking for a good TCO. How does Workday now stack up in that TCO versus building it yourself using these agentic code generation tools?
First of all, Keith, thank you for all the time that you've spent on Workday. I know it's your last call. We very much appreciate all the time you've spent with us and wish you all the best in whatever you choose to do next.
Thank you.
I guess I'd answer it in three prongs, and then I'd hand it over to Gerrit. When I look at the world of agentic and enterprise, we have this concept of lawful and lawless agents. Lawful being done the right way, lawless going directly against the data and getting results that bypass security or bypass a business process framework. I have yet to meet a single customer that wants to do things in a lawless way. They all have to follow lawful. If they follow lawful, there are three paths for us to be successful. One, the best path is for us to sell our own agents, and there's a clear TCO on those agents, and I think we've defined that and we're seeing the success with those agents. The second is they can use Extend Pro to build their own AI applications, again, leveraging our platform.
The third is as we roll out these AI APIs on a consumption basis, that's the way that third parties could build agentic applications, but they still have to use the rails, the security, the governance, the business process framework to make sure they're doing it in a lawful way. Again, I'll just say there's not a single customer that wants to do things in a lawless way now in the world of HR and finance. I don't know if you want to add anything, Gerrit, but I think I feel pretty well covered, Keith, in having a solution for whatever customers would like to do.
I think Aneel has said it well. First of all, we embrace the ecosystem of builders. Actually, we provide APIs as part of the Workday platform so customers can continue to build their own solutions and partner can continue to build own innovations that are part of the Workday platform and ecosystem. That in itself for us is a huge accelerant and value add and captured in our API Flex Credit model. I think the real point here, Keith, is that for differentiated AI solutions that drive real value, which are not just augmentations, but actually redefining how HR and finance operates by taking big labor spends and making them smaller software spends, you need to have the three ingredients as only Workday has. One is the world model of work, our compounding data set, which lets you actually contextualize AI systems.
Secondly, what Anil spoke about, all of the deterministic business process logic that defines policy compliance correctness in the key processes, from managing people to closing the books. Thirdly, not to forget, it's all about being deeply embedded in the flow of business, right? Us providing that as part of the business processes as they happen. Financial transactions, hiring decisions, pay cycles, allows us to actually automate the work in the background and not just being a side panel that comes in without a true integration in the flow of work. We feel really strong about both our platform and openness and the differentiation of our first-party agents.
Outstanding. That's super helpful, guys. Anil and team, it's really been a privilege covering Workday over these past two decades and seeing what you guys have built here. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Keith. We appreciate it.
Our next question comes from the line of Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you. I would love to hear a little bit more about the feedback you're getting from customers as you deploy Agentic. Sometimes what we notice is there's a gap between how these products and technologies perform in a sandbox or on a demo versus what customers are actually able to implement. Maybe just walk us through, when you present some of the newer technologies like Sana or some of the organic Agentic development, what is the gap that you have to work with customers on? What are the limiting factors to them fully getting the value out of the agent, and how do you work with the customer to solve them? Thank you.
Yeah. First, I'll put it to Gerrit and to Rob. I think there's a piece for both of them in that.
Yeah. First of all, what we see, Gabriela, is that for us, the big difference is we engage on very specific problems when we speak about AI. We are not coming in generically with a broad exploration of what may be possible. We are solving concrete problems in the value chain from hire to retire to our financial processes from record to report. That makes it very focused and value-specific. That alone in itself allows us to avoid that POC-driven, unclear ROI scenario. Because of all of the success that we have in that space, we can actually guide customers to the best practices, right? We know how Chipotle, 7-Eleven, and so many others have transformed hiring. Our NetApp transformed procurement. That allows us to have a very specific value-oriented conversation.
What we are seeing actually right now is a very fast takeoff on our first-party agents. Frankly, for us, the challenge is how do we meet this demand curve, right? We are now starting to provision Sana Self-Service Agent to all of our customers because actually we got so many inbound requests that we felt it's easier for us just to turn a default on than to have services engagement being wrapped around it. The last part before I hand it over to Rob, I think what you're pointing to, the true change is changing in the business processes and the operating model of companies when they decree a much higher degree of automation. That's not a technology change, right? That's a workforce transformation that's happening at multiple levels at the same point in time.
This is why we've created our forward deployed engineers and our AI consultants. They go in and they're not just bringing the technology, but they're really engaging on the business process transformation itself and guide our customers through it. Rob?
I would just add, Gabriela Borges, that we've had, I don't know, maybe 100 customer touch points between Aneel Bhusri, myself, and Gerrit Kazmaier in the last 3 months, and the feedback from all of them have been overwhelming, actually positive, where these customers are really focused on how our agents can help them in the flow of work and what they're doing. Certain agents have had tremendous success early on, like Deployment Agent, where existing customers can see the value immediately, and they're actually selling to other customers, and customers are your best sales folk. I would say that's super optimistic, and they all come in with questions on where we are, and they all leave with how do we actually get started. As Gerrit Kazmaier said, with Sana as the front door, we're launching that in a big way.
I'd say with Sana Enterprise, we're more focused on use cases, working with our customers to build use cases that add tremendous value to them. The uptake there on big brand names has been incredible. We ran the Sana Lighthouse program, and the demand has been, as I said, overwhelming early on. I would say the same.
Thank you so much. I appreciate the detail.
Our next question comes from the line of Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.
Hey, great. Thanks very much. Appreciate you taking the question. Aneel, maybe you could speak to just the early progress. I know last quarter, there was commentary just around reprioritizing growth. This quarter you mentioned best new ACV, 1 Q in 5 years. Maybe just speak to the progress and what you're seeing within Flex Credit or agentic usage or some of the efforts there. Zane, maybe it's just to complement how you're able to expand margin while still prioritizing growth at the moment. Thank you.
I guess I'd say a lot of the right work was already being done when I came back. Gerrit and team were on the right path, building the right agents, building the right infrastructure, and we're now seeing the fruits of those efforts, and we're just getting more focused on what those efforts are. Right? We're focused on building organic agents, and that's going extremely well with Self-Service Agent and Deployment Agent. The acquired agents continue to be strong, and as we roll out more of those agents, we're going to see continued momentum. We're also doing some really great work on the APIs, which is going to be the way we monetize the headless transaction. The pieces are coming into place. It's really about reprioritizing to be AI first and AI native, as opposed to AI being part of our story.
When you go through a technology transition, and I'm old enough to have been through a lot of them, you've got to put that technology transition front and center. Our core business is strong, but the 150th feature in HR or finance is not going to move the needle for our business. The next agentic application will. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Gerrit.
I think you said it well. Like Aneel has described, what we have changed at Workday and have laser focus now is either building APIs for AI or building AI agents. That allows us really to be fully focused on the biggest opportunity ahead of us.
Michael, I'll just add on the margin side, obviously, we're very pleased with the revenue performance in Q1, which always helps you on margin. The same being said, as Aneel said, coming back with focus, and the teams across the company are focused on how we work faster, how we stay focused in each area, and disciplined in where we make hires and the work that they're doing. On top of that, we're recognizing the benefits on AI itself. Within Gerrit's team in R&D, we're seeing tremendous productivity improvements. Whether it's our customer success business, we're seeing productivity improvements there. A lot of Rob's team on go-to-market as well. We're using our own products as you would expect us to.
Very pleased with the progress we're seeing enabled us to move up the guide 50 basis points over the course of the year, and we look forward to continuing to increase our margins over time. We remain focused in both the top line and the bottom line and investing in key areas here.
If I could just say, this is more aspirational than anything else. I'd love to see us continue the growth that we had in Q1, but keep headcount as close to flat for the year as possible because we are getting the benefits of using our own products and other AI tools. I think that's where I'm hopeful and believe that we're going to have additional margin expansion as we get those benefits. I would say that's different than what my view was coming in three months ago.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of John DiFucci with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my question. Aneel and team, really nice job on the execution this quarter. I actually have a question related to the Sana AI Summit today in New York. Your new Chief AI Officer, Joel Hellermark, talked about not playing it safe and what is a technology paradigm shift. This all sounds good. Workday has a leadership position. Aneel, you know this as well as anybody. The innovator's dilemma is a strong force. With that context, I sort of have a high-level question for Gerrit and maybe Aneel, if you want to join in too. Gerrit, how do you as the product leader at Workday ensure that you do not only enable this paradigm shift happening with Workday, but actually lead through it?
Is it possible to do that while leveraging the leadership presence you have built since the last paradigm shift, or do you have to sort of abandon stuff?
Yeah. Thank you for that question, and thank you for attending Sana AI Summit today here in New York. Truly a landmark moment, I think, for us and for the industry. What you have heard today, I just want to break it down very clearly so we all understand what we say, we are not playing it safe and driving deep AI innovation. For AI, it's all about understanding what the key value levers are. As you have said earlier, right, with Workday's world model of work, we have a set of data which allows us to rethink business processes that weren't part of Workday's remit today. Because of the AI leverage that we are getting that Zane described in just productivity, we can execute so fast. Today what you have heard that we announced our Travel Agent.
We didn't do travel before, we did expenses, we did projects. We have the worker profile and the pay cycle, right? Now, we can actually venture in this new area by just bringing this together in one seamless experience. Without taking on a high degree of functional development cost in the travel space. Through AI, the data that we have and the productivity leverage, we can bring it together on the Workday platform. I think the even bigger one, I think this was the context that Joel spoke about. We also launched Sana for ITSM today. It's all about being really intentional here. The most complex, the most expensive journeys in ITSM are related to the employee life cycle. Those are all events that we have inherently in the Workday platform already. Recruiting, onboarding, off-boarding, team changes, relocations.
Now, taking that and actually extending that out now to the complete workflow automation that sits beyond HR service delivery to IT service delivery suddenly feels supernatural. Basically, AI makes us boundaryless or limitless, right, in the opportunities that we can pursue. When Joel spoke today at the Sana AI Summit, is that we think of ourselves as an AI challenger, not as a defendant, and we are putting intentional investments into areas where we know we have all of the benefits already at Workday today to go out and disrupt places.
I would just add to what Gerrit said, John, and echo what you said about thank you for attending the event earlier. Not playing it safe is not like we're going to take risk with security or governance. It's more that I think AI sort of resets competitive boundaries, and we can make bets in a bunch of new markets. All the bets don't need to work. If we make 3 or 4 bets and 2 of them work, that's a huge success. I think that what you're going to see is us, first of all, doubling down on what we're doing in AI within our HR and finance world, but also taking some bets that expand our TAM because they're there for the taking.
Our data model with HR and finance happens to be a very robust data model that really captures every business object under the sun to build other applications. I think that's one of the reasons why we have that flexibility.
Thank you very much. I got to say, this is one of the first times I've heard an application company talk about things, and it's not restrictive when it comes to AI. It's actually expansive. It's still early, but thanks for those answers.
Our next question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Excellent. Thank you so much for taking the question. Gentlemen, I wanted to ask about Deployment Agent. Reducing the cost and time of deployment. I remember the impact of Workday Launch years ago, which was targeted at the mid-market, then we saw it become a competitive weapon even in the low end of enterprise. How would you compare Deployment Agent, perhaps to Workday Launch as an incremental unlock, helping to reduce TCO and make you even more competitive? Also, could it positively impact seasonality of your business and being able to sign deals even later into the calendar year for customers that might want to go live by the beginning of their next fiscal year? Any additional thoughts about Deployment Agent would be great. Thanks.
I think it's Rob and Gerrit.
Yeah, let me go first. For Deployment Agent with new implementations and Workday GO, what are the numbers we're seeing?
30% on current projects and 50% reduction in the projects that we are just starting now.
Yeah. That'll continue to improve and change the whole dynamics around implementation and speed to implementation. Goes to your point early on about can customers go live faster? For sure, we would definitely think that's a possibility, and we'll definitely get there much quicker. The hard work in implementations, master data, testing, and that becomes just so much more effective and faster. That's a benefit. The part that I'm really quite excited as well is the existing customers that are deploying Deployment Agent. I mentioned the State of Arkansas and the benefits that they receive, the existing customers using the Deployment Agent when they want to change configuration and they want to do things. They don't have to go out to RFP. They don't have to go talk to a systems integrator.
They can see what they need to do themselves, and that makes it very self-service in these large institutions. That enables them to move much faster to deploy different business models as well. I think there's broad coverage with it, and there's going to be broad impact with it as well.
Brad, since you asked about Launch is a method which basically has a scope of Workday and an implementation method. It allowed us to super streamline it. Deployment Agent is actually now applying AI to automate that entire process. It's the next logical step, if you think about it, from improving that method further to make it AI automated. The mission of that team, the mission statement itself is the $0 deployment of Workday in a month. We are doing exactly what you already have led to. We are taking now the Launch scope and basically drive it with Deployment Agent to significantly increase the automation, which directly translates to the reduction in project time and customer cost at virtually the same amount. We are still at the beginning of that.
We are super confident that with that, we can completely squash migration complexity and deployment times for customers to a degree. That the whole consideration in the mid-market, for instance, if you move to Workday or not, because time of migration, cost of migration are a consideration. Our ambition is to make this a completely non-issue, and with that, unlock our customers' Workday at scale.
Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.
Our next question comes from the line of Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just a quick two-parter. Aneel, for you, it's rare when Q1 has a net new ACV acceleration, and it sounded like it was something that was a little bit different this quarter, particularly on the net new side. Maybe just dive in. What are you seeing out there in the demand environment? That's not happening for every other application software company, clearly. What do you think is different from a Workday perspective that drove that incrementally better execution? Zane, just maybe any high-level commentary on how much, if any, DIA benefit you guys saw in the quarter that I think Rob alluded to in the prepared remarks. Just when do you think we'll start to see some of this accelerating bookings that seemingly is happening under the hood actually reflect in some of the CRPO dynamics?
I would say, first of all, one quarter does not make a year. We're optimistic heading out of Q1, but we've got a lot to play for the rest of the year. Candidly, I think there were some deals that slipped from Q4. We always talk about how the deals slipped from Q4, we'll close them in Q1. Rob's team really did close a lot of great business in Q1. The reality is, if you look at the split, the AI products are driving the growth. What's exciting to me is that the organic products are showing great promise, and they're getting early acceptance and deployment, but they're still in the early days.
I think towards the second half of the year when they're deeper into general availability and more customers are using it, and we're on the Flex Credits model, I think it's all goodness this year as we build towards that AI growth. Rob has done a great job of making sure the sales force and services teams are aligned to driving that growth, not just out of the core, but really focused on the AI growth.
Yeah, Alex, as you touched on, we were pleased to see DIA come into the first quarter. As Aneel alluded to, it was a great quarter for a number of reasons with linearity. We recognized some DIA revenue, not significant, but some DIA revenue in the quarter. Unlike last year, we expect to recognize that revenue over the course of the year. If you recall, last year, it was back-end loaded. We're pleased with how we'll recognize that revenue over the course of the year. As Aneel mentioned, with a lot of the flex credit sales and the momentum we have in our sales and in AI, we expect to see those bookings ramp up over the course of the year.
Have a larger booking impact into the second half, and we'd expect because of the recognition of revenue to see that impact FY 2028 to a greater degree.
Perfect. Thank you guys, and congrats on a great summit.
Thanks, Alex.
Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thill with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Thanks. Aneel, for Sana, when does this start to get fully integrated, and when do you feel like this starts to have an impact on deals? Maybe the answer is right now. Second follow-up with Rob and Zane, just on the quarter, just to follow on Alex Zukin's point, were there less changes to the sales go-to-market this Q1 than you had maybe in past Q1s? I know you mentioned there were some slipped deals, but perhaps there's also less tinkering with the go-to-market team that gave them more time in the field to sell.
On the first one, it's available today. It's fully integrated. We need to move more customers onto our equivalent of the innovation services agreement. The uptake has been super rapid. On the Sana learning piece, we also had a good quarter there. The rest of Sana is more about what comes next with some of these newer applications. I don't know, Gerd, if you want to add anything, but it is now the new front end for Workday. That is de facto default. That is the new front end for Workday.
Yeah, the only piece to add is that at the end of May, we're going to provision Sana for Workday and Sana Self-Service Agent to all of our customers on our current AI terms of service and make it basically the default deployed solution as part of their contract. We're unlocking it, so it's going to be a huge surge for us again.
Yeah, on the field and with the less changes year-over-year, I would say we were very prepared for coming into financial year 2027. We had planned this very early on. We knew that we needed to move to a denser model with customer base because of the agents and what we're doing with inorganic agents and agents. We were super ready for that. We had broad-based success on a global basis. North America did really well. Australia came back strong. Our international business with Europe was very good. Japan was very good. We had a strong net new quarter and a strong large enterprise quarter. I would say we were ready for whatever changes we put in place, and it was not disruptive, obviously. We had very good linearity all through Q1.
Thank you.
We will now take two more questions. Our next question comes from the line of Karl Keirstead with UBS.
Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe, Rob, just sticking with you. Just as investors and I watch the number of risks pick up in the tech sector, and we worry a little bit about seat compression spilling over into the non-tech sector, I just wanted to ask you what you're seeing in terms of seat growth versus module expansion as drivers of that nice overall expansion that you highlighted on the call. Thank you.
I would say we see a long runway with the value sales on the agents and what we're doing with Flex Credits, the launch of Sana into the market in broad-base. We see that, we said early on, I think last quarter we mentioned that the back half of the year, we continue to see that. On the FEC expansion, I mean, we continue to see expansion in the overall when we look at the amount of customers. We acquire net new customers, we bring in new customers on board, we continue to do pretty well in the net new space, I still think there's opportunity there. I would say, ultimately a broader part of our business is going to move to the Flex Credit type environment with APIs and consumption.
Carl, I'll just add, we've commented over the last number of quarters, as it relates to FSCs, and as Rob alluded to, it's been flat or marginally up. This quarter I'd say flattish. To your point on the technology sector, obviously we've got diverse customer base. We've seen any declines in the tech sector more than offset in other areas. There's been a balance. There's definitely been movement. We did see it in the tech sector specifically. We've been flattish and, as I point out in my prepared remarks, we've seen good net expansion more broadly. It's not a meaningful part of our revenue growth.
I think it's really important to recognize that if FTE count does go down, it's being replaced by AI is replacing labor, not software right now. As long as we do what we are doing right now and continue to execute, we're a beneficiary of the shift to agentic work.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Our final question comes from the line of Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Your line is open.
Hey, thanks for squeezing me in, and congrats from me as well. Just a quick one for Zane. CRPO, as we expected, RPO was slightly lower growth. Can you talk a little bit about if that's kind of customer signing shorter contracts, so there's a bit of duration effect? Can you just talk to the puts and takes there? Thank you.
Raimo, yeah, happy to. I mentioned on the last call as well, we've actually seen real consistency in duration, and RPO, at the highest level is more driven by the mix of customer base versus net new offerings. Over the last couple of quarters, I've called out that we've been pleased with the growth on customer base as a mix. The duration for each of those has been pretty consistent. When you do a renewal, it tends to have a slightly shorter duration than a net new offering. It's simply been that mix that's driven any difference between CRPO and RPO.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. Very clear.
Sure.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation on today's conference. You may now disconnect.