TORONTO — Dayforce is exiting the public markets so it can move fast to capitalize on how AI can add to the HR software it sells to big businesses, says CEO David Ossip.

On Thursday, the Minneapolis-headquartered firm announced it had reached an agreement to be taken private by Thoma Bravo, a Chicago-based private equity firm, in a US$12.3-billion deal. While Dayforce is technically an American firm, Ossip and a large share of its workforce are based in Canada. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority will also take a minority stake in the company as part of the deal.

Dayforce sees an opportunity to build “a generational AI-powered people platform,” Ossip said in an interview. Going private “allows us to make the right investments across the right timeline.” 

The company made a US$36.2-million profit on US$946.5 million in revenue in the first six months of the year, up nearly six-fold and 10.7 per cent year over year, respectively. It exceeded analysts’ consensus sales and earnings expectations in each of the last five quarters, according to Visible Alpha data. Still, Dayforce’s shares had slumped this year before reports of Thoma Bravo’s takeover bid. The investment firm’s offer of US$70 a share represents a premium of 32 per cent over Friday’s closing stock price.

Dayforce previously set a target of generating US$1 billion in free cash flow by 2031, and Ossip said Thursday it’s still on track to achieve that. But the path to get there “is not what the public markets like to see, which would be a tidy spreadsheet of quarter-over-quarter neat progression,” he said. Under Thoma Bravo ownership, Dayforce can spend more easily on its AI capabilities.

The firm has already launched several AI tools. For example, its AI assistant can answer workers’ questions about wages, benefits, payroll deductions and time-off policies. The chatbot can also tell managers which employees are late or haven’t come into work, or give executives an overview of staff performance. A suite of AI agents, launched in November, perform tasks like generating new training courses and job postings, or handling workers’ requests for time off and shift changes.

Dayforce’s AI tools have gotten “a lot of traction” already, according to Ossip; half of the new customers the firm added in the first six months of the year bought access to the assistant. “AI has to be delivered practically, where you can actually create value,” he said, adding that the firm’s tools help employers handle daily tasks more quickly and easily.

A new crop of startups are selling tools powered by commercially available large language models (LLMs) that claim to automate HR work like recruitment interviews, employee onboarding, and payroll. Dayforce’s advantage over those upstart rivals is all the data it manages for clients, according to Ossip. Its software already handles information on workers “pre-hire to post-retirement,” while following strict requirements for security, privacy and confidentiality, he said. 

The firm has been building up that data edge for years. Ossip launched Dayforce in 2008 as a single cloud platform to replace the many software systems big businesses were using for various HR functions. U.S. firm Ceridian acquired the startup in early 2012, installing Ossip as CEO soon after; the firm rebranded as Dayforce last October. 

Some companies, mostly in tech, have laid off staff as they adopt AI, leading to fears of broader job losses due to the technology. Ossip has downplayed the impact of labour-market disruption on its business, which is selling software that businesses use to manage human employees. Most of its clients are in sectors that still need frontline workers like hospitality, retail, manufacturing and health care, he said on an earnings call earlier this month.

If the deal closes as expected in early 2026, Dayforce will become the latest of several tech companies to exit the Toronto Stock Exchange over the last three years. It would also be Thoma Bravo’s second major go-private deal in Canada, after the investor bought cybersecurity firm Magnet Forensics in January 2023 and combined it with rival Grayshift. 

Dayforce remains committed to Canada, Ossip said. “I’m going nowhere.”