Shares of Workday popped 9% on Wednesday to around $238 after activist investor Elliott Investment Management announced a $2 billion stake in the company.

Workday announced a multi-year plan to enhance its operating model and capital allocation framework on Tuesday, and Elliott said it believes the plan will drive “substantial long-term value creation.”

“We believe CEO Carl Eschenbach, CFO Zane Rowe and the entire Workday team have made substantial progress in recent years, positioning Workday as a unique software franchise with industry-leading growth potential, best-in-class customer retention and a proven management team,” Elliott said in a release on Tuesday.

“We appreciate Elliott’s support,” a Workday spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “Workday is a market leader with strong growth potential, and we remain focused on executing our strategy and delivering innovative solutions that help our customers succeed.”

Workday provides software for finance and human resources departments.

Last month, Workday said it would acquire Paradox, a company that offers conversational artificial intelligence software for recruiting. Workday did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Workday shares are down roughly 15% year to date. The company’s market cap sits at about $63 billion.

WATCH: Elliott takes $4 billion stake in PepsiCo

Amazon on Wednesday introduced an artificial intelligence agent that will help third-party merchants operate their online businesses.

The company is adding agentic capabilities to Seller Assistant, its AI tool for third-party sellers, meaning the software can take action on a merchant’s behalf with their permission, Amazon said. The update was announced during Amazon’s annual Accelerate conference for sellers in Seattle.

Amazon said tools like Seller Assistant free merchants up to “spend more time focusing on product innovation and customer relationships,” while its generative AI tool handles more tedious operational tasks.

Amazon has released several AI tools for third-party sellers, which account for more than half of all goods sold on the site, such as a product listing generator and an image and video generator for ads.

Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide selling partner services, told CNBC in an interview this week that 1.3 million third-party sellers have used its generative AI listing tools, which can produce about 70% of what makes up a product listing on its webstore.

“It really gives the seller, in some sense, a team of experts,” Mehta said. “An expert in listing and in pricing and promotions and supply chain, all the things that a small business normally has to either try and learn on their own, hire someone to be an expert, pay someone to be an expert, or sometimes just accept not being that good at, which is not ideal.”

The company said its enhanced Seller Assistant goes beyond answering queries and is capable of coordinating inventory orders and business growth plans, as well as implementing fixes for account issues, potentially helping merchants avoid costly suspensions.

Over time, Amazon expects to add more agentic capabilities based on seller feedback, the company added.

Generative AI has evolved from image and text generators to agentic AI tools that can complete multi-step tasks for users with minimal supervision. Outside of its third-party marketplace, Amazon’s AI lab in San Francisco in March released a preview of an agent that can take action in a web browser.

Seller Assistant uses Bedrock, a software tool that lets users access large language models from Amazon and other companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.

The company doesn’t currently plan to charge merchants to use Seller Assistant, Mehta said.

Sellers pay Amazon to access its in-house fulfillment services, account management services and other offerings. It’s become a sizable business for the company, bringing in $40.3 billion in the second quarter.

Amazon last September launched the first iteration of its AI assistant for sellers, codenamed Project Amelia at the time, allowing merchants to troubleshoot issues with their account, get advice on inventory planning and brainstorm listing titles, among other tasks.

Waymo has partnered with Uber to get its robotaxis into Atlanta and Austin, Texas. Now it’s teaming up with Lyft for the first time in a commercial deal to enter Nashville next year.

Lyft stock climbed 10% on the news.

Riders in Nashville will be able to hail a Waymo robotaxi through the Waymo One app, and Lyft will add Waymo robotaxis to its platform over time, the companies said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

Lyft “will provide end-to-end fleet management services including vehicle readiness and maintenance, infrastructure, and depot operations in Nashville,” for the Waymo fleet, the companies said.

Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, has taken a big lead in the U.S. robotaxi market, launching in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as Austin and Atlanta. It surpassed 10 million paid trips in May, and has plans to start commercial operations next year in Miami, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Denver, and now Nashville.

Lyft CEO David Risher told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Wednesday that it’s a “formative” time for the industry.

“What we see in markets where there are autonomous cars … we actually see those markets growing faster, faster than a lot of the other markets we operate in,” he said.

Tesla and Amazon’s Zoox have limited tests underway. Smaller players like Wayve, Nuro and May Mobility are also working on driverless technology in the U.S.

In international markets, Waymo faces its most formidable rival in Baidu’s Apollo Go service. In August, Baidu announced a partnership with Lyft to bring driverless taxis to Europe next year. A month earlier, Baidu said it was working with Uber to deploy autonomous cars in markets outside the U.S. and mainland China, starting with Asia and the Middle East later this year.

Lyft previously worked with Waymo on a pilot in the Phoenix area in 2019. The ride-hailing company started a test program with May Mobility in Atlanta earlier this month.

Lyft can use the help as it tries to keep up with Uber, which has expanded its lead over its smaller rival. Uber’s market cap has surpassed $200 billion, making it about 25 times more valuable than Lyft.