November 2026
Deepthi Madhava & Matt Compton
We are pleased to share that Workday has announced its acquisition of C1.ai, formerly known as ConductorOne, an Oregon Venture Fund (OVF) portfolio company.
This is an exciting milestone for founders Alex Bovee and Paul Querna, the C1 team, investors, and Portland's vibrant enterprise technology ecosystem.
As AI agents increasingly take on work inside enterprises, managing and securing access for both humans and AI agents has become a critical challenge.C1 recognized this shift early, way before AI agents had serious adoption. They also saw the importance of just-in-time access, giving people and AI agents access to systems only when needed and removing it when no longer required, rather than granting permanent privileges. This approach reduced security risks while making enterprises more agile.
The C1 team built a modern, cloud-native identity governance platform around this vision. Its open-source Baton protocol made it easier to integrate with hundreds of applications, addressing one of the hardest challenges in enterprise identity, managing access across fragmented systems.
Workday's acquisition reflects the growing strategic importance of identity governance in the age of AI.
At OVF, we backed C1 because of our conviction in the team and the market opportunity. Alex and Paul brought deep expertise from Okta and firsthand lived experience building enterprise identity solutions. We believed non-human identities would proliferate and enterprises would need a fundamentally new approach to identity governance.
Our diligence in 2025 got the team and market opportunity right. What surprised us was how quickly the market moved towards C1’s vision and who emerged as the buyer. We anticipated interest from traditional cybersecurity companies, but Workday's strategic fit makes sense. As a system of record for enterprise HR, Workday can connect identity with access governance across people and AI agents.
C1's founders and much of its engineering talent are rooted in Portland, building on the region's strong foundation of identity and cybersecurity expertise. Workday is committed to growing the Portland office.
Congratulations to Alex, Paul, and the entire C1 team! We are proud to have been part of the journey and grateful to our venture partner community for helping us identify and support exceptional companies like C1.