“By changing the way the world learns, we change the world.”
Joel Hellermark, Founder and CEO, Sana

Today, we’re thrilled to celebrate that Workday has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sana for $1.1bn – the largest AI exit in the region. Sana is proof that Europe can produce category leaders with global ambition and impact. 

We couldn’t be happier for Sana, one of the most brilliant, fun, and relentlessly driven teams we’ve ever had the privilege to back.

Instead of just talking about the future of knowledge, Sana built it. And kept building. From enterprise learning and search to assistants and agents, Sana is now pioneering AI for work. Their plan to join forces with Workday will unlock a whole new level of scale and impact.

The Sana Magic💡

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard  

Joel + Team: A rare blend of talent, vision, and product instinct. They gathered some of the sharpest minds on the planet to tackle one of humanity’s toughest challenges, advancing knowledge. Their culture is ambitious yet humble, high-performing yet caring – a place to create your life’s work.

Product + Design: Sana delivers consumer-grade, Apple-like product design: combining high velocity while having a design-first approach. Always close to the cutting edge research, they pair advanced AI with an intuitive, elegant interface.

Category-Defining: Great startups don’t just build products; they build ecosystems. Sana reimagined how organizations learn and evolve, embedding itself at the heart of knowledge. In the era of agents and generative AI, this matters more than ever.

Ahead of Their Time: Long before ‘AI’ dominated the headlines, Sana understood its power and used it with purpose. 

Our Journey Together 🌍

“Advancing human knowledge is the world’s most important problem to solve.”

Joel Hellermark, Founder and CEO of Sana

Our journey officially began in November 2020 (though, in truth, it started years earlier,  when Joel, still a teenager, interned at one of Ted’s companies). From our first meeting, the product stunned us, the vision inspired us, and every reference told the same story: this is a team overflowing with talent. Motherbrain agreed (our in-house built AI tool).

📌 December 7th, 2020: A snapshot from the meeting where we presented our lead term sheet. A few weeks later, we closed the deal on Christmas Eve 🎁.

We’re proud to have been Sana’s first institutional backer, and grateful to share the ride with such remarkable co-investors and angels: JP Sanday (Menlo), Scott Sandell, Philip Chopin, Luke Pappas, Hilarie Koplow-McAdams (NEA), Anna Nordell-Westling, Mattias Miksche, Sophia Bendz, Fredrik Jung Abbou, Erik Engellau-Nilsson, John Lindfors, Sven Hagströmer, Fredrik Strömsten and many more… The list of believers is long :).

Along the way, there were moments we’ll never forget:
- The feeling of empowering users worldwide to unlock progress through knowledge.
- All the meetings where the entire team dialed in, buzzing with energy.
- The product demos that felt less like presentations and more like magic shows.
- The impact beyond the company: from the Sana’s AI Summit to the Swedish AI Reform.
- And of course, Jon’s legendary pasta.

Every interaction with Sana is a reminder of what a once-in-a-generation team feels like.

The Next Chapter 🚀

Sana is proof that Europe can produce category leaders with global ambition and impact. Their plan to join forces with Workday, who have served more than 75 million users under contract at over 65% of the Fortune 500, Sana is positioned to drive even greater impact at scale.

To Joel and the entire Sana team: congratulations. You’ve built something Europe will celebrate for years, and you did it your way. This is just the start. We were proud to be there at the beginning, and we are even prouder to see what comes next.

Here’s to the next chapter.

💚 Sandra, Ted, and the EQT team