Orrick has been called in to counsel Workday on its $1.1bn acquisition of Swedish AI firm Sana, which is being repped on the deal by DLA Piper.
Orrick is also advising the US-based finance and HR software vendor on its $1bn acquisition of Paradox, another AI firm, announced last month, with DLA Piper acting for the target.
The Orrick team for both deals is led by San Francisco-based M&A partner Ramy Shweiky and Matthew Gemello, who leads the firm’s global corporate business unit out of Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, the DLA Piper team guiding Sana is headed by Stockholm-based corporate partners Mikael Moreira and Petter Kjöllerström and US corporate partners John Hutar and James Fischer. DLA Piper said Moreira had previously advised Sana on several financing rounds.
Workday offers a cloud-based platform that provides applications to manage services such as recruitment, accounting and payroll. The Sana acquisition will allow Workday’s customers, which include 65% of the Fortune 500, to create tailored dashboards to monitor their live recruitment pipeline and automate their end-to-end performance review process.
Law firms are benefitting from a wave of consolidation in the HR software sector, as businesses look to integrate AI into their products. Just last month, Kirkland & Ellis said it was advising marquee client Thoma Bravo on its $12.3bn acquisition of Workday rival Dayforce, repped by Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, while earlier this year Davis Polk acted for Paychex when it bought Kirkland-repped rival Paycor for $4.1bn.
Workday’s Sana deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday’s 2026 fiscal year, ending on 31 January. Allen & Company is serving as financial advisor to Workday.
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