Workato Launches AI Research Lab and Accelerates as an AI-First Enterprise

The era of the agentic enterprise has a new launchpad -- Workato’s AI Research Lab

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Workato®, the leader in agentic orchestration, today announced the launch of its Workato AI Research Lab, a new research and innovation hub focused on advancing the science and engineering of autonomous enterprise agents. The Lab, based in San Francisco, will serve as the engine for developing elite AI agents and integrating cutting-edge research directly into Workato’s platform and customer experiences.

“There’s no shortage of AI hype, but it’s not moving any of our core KPIs,” said Vijay Tella, CEO of Workato. “While others experiment with chatbots and assistants at the edge, we’re deploying agents at the core -- taking on real work, showing up in org charts, and transforming how companies operate. This is the beginning of the agentic enterprise, and Workato is ground zero.”

Unlike AI “wrapper” tools that sit on top of existing systems, the technologies emerging from Workato’s AI Research Lab are built from the ground up -- advancing synthetic evaluation techniques, automated reinforcement learning, and customer-specific model creation and optimization to deliver trustworthy agents that can operate autonomously across mission-critical enterprise functions.

The launch also marks the arrival of Adam Seligman as Chief Technology Officer and General Manager for AI Incubation. Based in San Francisco, Seligman will lead the company’s AI and developer strategy, uniting platform R&D, agentic research, and a growing community of developers and AI engineers under one vision. He joins Workato from senior product and developer leadership roles at AWS, Google, and Salesforce.

“Enterprise AI doesn’t start with a model -- it starts with real work,” Seligman said. “We’re building the tools and systems that let developers create agents with autonomy, precision, and accountability. The Lab gives us the technical foundation to lead and the community environment to learn fast and build faster.”

Powering the Agentic Enterprise

The Workato AI Research Lab is led by Yasser Shaaban, Vice President of AI Research, formerly Chief Architect of PowerApps and an AI leader at AWS and UiPath. The Lab’s mission is to solve foundational challenges in agent reliability, skill orchestration, and real-world adaptability, bridging the gap between agent ambition and enterprise-grade execution.

Located at 600 Illinois Street in San Francisco, the Lab places Workato at the center of the city’s growing AI resurgence -- at the heart of the platforms, startups, and communities shaping the next era of enterprise technology. In addition to driving foundational research, it will serve as a hub for AI developers, enterprise builders, customers, and partners. Workato will host meetups, technical workshops, hackdays, and immersive hands-on sessions to accelerate adoption, experimentation, and collaboration.

The Lab will work directly with customers across industries to develop and operationalize agents for functions across both the front office (such as sales, marketing, and customer success) and the back office (including finance, HR, and IT operations). Early deployments are underway with a major healthcare insurer, a global e-commerce company, and a B2B SaaS provider.

“Our job is to build elite agents that enterprises can trust with real work -- agents that are not just smart, but dependable, auditable, and deeply contextualized,” Seligman explained. “That means blending frontier research with enterprise rigor. The Workato AI Research Lab is where that fusion happens.”

Strategic Acquisitions and Scientific Partnerships

To accelerate its AI roadmap, Workato has acquired xmad.ai, a frontier AI-research company led by Oscar Wu, whose breakthroughs include:

• DFLOAT11: A new category-creating numerical format that enables any LLM to run using 30 percent less GPU memory while achieving mathematically exact results, cutting inference costs by up to 50 percent without sacrificing precision.
• No-code fine-tuning: A proprietary pipeline enabling rapid, push-button adaptation of open-weight models like Llama, Qwen, and Mistral.

In parallel, Workato appointed Dr. Anshu Shrivastava, a tenured professor of computer science at Rice University, as Chief AI Advisor. Dr. Shrivastava will guide the Lab’s research direction and maintain publication rigor and academic excellence. Workato’s AI Research Lab also welcomes Oscar Wu, Tianyi Zhang, Yueh Che Lee, Qi Yang Huang, and a group of AI professors from xmad.ai as core members to accelerate the Lab’s mission.

Building Toward the Next Generation of Enterprise Work

Workato’s AI-first transformation is rooted in more than just building individual agents -- it’s about rethinking how work itself is managed, measured, and orchestrated. As autonomous agents move from theory to practice, the next frontier lies in how enterprises coordinate and govern them: not just deploying agents in isolation, but managing them holistically with clear goals, real-time telemetry, and operational transparency.

With the opening of the AI Research Lab, Workato is inviting customers and partners to get involved through early access programs, feedback cycles, and hands-on experimentation with emerging agentic capabilities. The Lab will be a center of gravity for these collaborations, offering opportunities to help shape and accelerate their AI strategies alongside Workato’s research and engineering teams.

Later this month at its flagship WOW 2025 conference, Workato will unveil how the next generation of AI-powered work is coming to life, demonstrating how companies can move from pilot projects to a full, cross-functional system of agents operating at scale.

About Workato

Workato transforms technology complexity into business opportunity. As the leading agentic orchestration company, Workato empowers enterprises to connect and unify data, processes, applications, and experiences. Its AI-driven platform enables teams to navigate complex workflows in real-time, driving efficiency and agility. Trusted by more than 12,000 global customers, Workato empowers organizations of every size to unlock new value and lead in today’s fast-changing world. Learn how Workato helps businesses of all sizes achieve more at workato.com.

Source: Workato