SAP’s biggest AI bet yet: Agents that execute, not just assist

At Sapphire 2026, SAP unveiled what it calls the “Autonomous Enterprise:” a sweeping vision in which AI agents don’t just assist workers, but execute business processes themselves. “We’re building nothing less than a new SAP,” CEO Christian Klein told attendees in Orlando, Florida. The company, he said, is “becoming a business AI company.”

The centerpiece is the SAP Autonomous Suite, which deploys more than 50 domain-specific SAP Joule AI assistants across finance, supply chain, procurement, HR, and customer engagement. Those assistants orchestrate a subset of 200-plus specialized agents to execute tasks end-to-end, from compressing the financial close to automating supply chain rebalancing.

Klein emphasized that enterprise AI demands precision. “If AI runs payroll, financial close, or supply chain planning, 80% accuracy is not good enough,” he said.

A new platform and a new interface

Underpinning the suite is SAP’s new Business AI Platform, which unifies SAP’s Business Technology Platform, Business Data Cloud, and AI capabilities into a single governed environment. At its core is what SAP calls “company memory,” a context graph that feeds policies, procedures, Slack conversations, and email approval chains to agents so they know what to do, and, critically, what not to do.

“When there’s an exception, it’s added to company memory and all agents adapt instantly,” said Muhammad Alam, executive board member responsible for product engineering.

SAP also introduced Joule Work, which fundamentally changes how users interact with SAP software. Instead of navigating applications and entering data across screens, users describe a desired outcome, and Joule orchestrates the workflows, data, and agents to get it done.

For developers, SAP launched Joule Studio 2.0, available free through year-end, which lets them build agents with Python, Claude Code, or Cursor, and deploy to a managed runtime. The AI Agent Hub, arriving in the third quarter at no additional charge, provides a single place to discover, manage, and govern agents across SAP and non-SAP systems.

Partners and proof points

SAP brought key partners on stage, and on screen, to underscore its AI ambitions. In video appearances, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei said that Claude models power Joule agents across finance, procurement, and supply chain, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang discussed open agent protocols that allow AI to act safely within enterprises.

JPMorganChase CFO Jeremy Barnum said that the bank is upgrading its general ledger to SAP’s unified platform and is exploring agentic capabilities for treasury management. “You can’t realize the full potential of AI in a legacy environment,” he said.

A number of customers are already in production. For example, according to Rob Fisher, KPMG’s global head of advisory, the company has deployed Joule across 270,000 users, with 3,000 consultants using 20 agents, and the company is targeting $120 million in reduced contract leakage.

In addition, Ericsson reported 90,000 hours saved through the use of personalized AI recommendations by its 85,000 employees. Bayer is using cash-collection assistants; Novartis has deployed high-volume sourcing agents; and H&M has demonstrated a store-intelligence system that delivers real-time performance data and AI-driven recommendations to store managers.

Mind the gap

Still, adoption trails ambition. Maribel Lopez, founder of Lopez Research, said enterprises aren’t deploying what’s already available. “SAP customers are very cautious because the SAP workloads are at the heart of running the business,” she said.

Mickey North Rizza, group vice president of enterprise software at IDC, is more optimistic. “Currently, 73% of AI agents and assistants are used frequently, and bring 30 to 90 minutes a day in savings,” she said. “SAP’s AI vision is a north star for their clients to move successfully into the AI world.”

SAP’s Alam added that customers have grown impatient with the company’s AI promises and have been taking him to task. Referring to the financial close assistant, one demanded: “Is it really there? If it’s three months out, I’ll go build it myself.” That’s creating a new sense of urgency, Alam said.

Trust, but verify

SAP has made governance a central focus, Alam noted. The company has built SOX auditor compatibility into its framework to ensure audit readiness at the agent level, and every action is logged and traceable.

But Jonathan von Rüeden, SAP’s chief AI officer, acknowledged that customers have different comfort levels with autonomy, depending on the process. “In a financial close process, the CFO is going to want to have a look when books are being closed,” he said in an interview. “But people are more comfortable with autonomous accruals.”

SAP is also prioritizing interoperability. Agents built in Joule Studio will support the A2A protocol to connect with third-party agents, and SAP’s orchestration layer will govern non-SAP agents at no additional cost.

The road to autonomy

To accelerate adoption, SAP has updated its offerings. RISE with SAP customers will get three Joule assistants activated in their first year, while GROW with SAP customers will get access to the full portfolio of agents upon onboarding. Agent-led transformation tooling can reduce migration efforts by approximately 35%, according to SAP.

“[But] right now, customers don’t need thousands of agents; they need to get agentic AI up and running with a set of secure, governed agents that help them do specific use cases,” Lopez said. “Customers need to ask what the vision is, tie it back into their needs, and then set up the journey.”