Ceridian bought a small Toronto startup in 2012 and then handed that startup's founder the keys to the whole company. The startup was Dayforce, and its founder, David Ossip, became Ceridian's CEO. He rebuilt an old payroll business, with roots in the mainframe maker Control Data, around his cloud software. In April 2018 Ceridian went public in New York and Toronto. It was the largest Canadian tech IPO on record, and Dayforce was its main product.

The Startup That Took Over

Ceridian processed paychecks for decades on older systems. Dayforce took a different approach. It kept payroll, time clocks, scheduling, and benefits in one database, and it recalculated pay as hours came in, so employers saw costs every day. After the 2012 deal, Ceridian moved its customers onto Dayforce and let the old products shrink. The bet was that big employers would pay a premium for one system that replaced a pile of separate tools.

Two Listings, One New Name

Ceridian priced its IPO at $22 a share in April 2018, listing on both the New York and Toronto stock exchanges. The stock closed its first day up about 42 percent, at roughly $31. The company grew Dayforce for years and in 2024 renamed itself after it. In August 2025 Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Dayforce for $70 a share in cash, about $12.3 billion including debt. The deal closed in February 2026, and Dayforce left both exchanges.

Cover: Sunrise, Charles François Daubigny. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a sunrise (a new day of payroll).