"Our goal is to embed Nvidia's robotics capabilities into SAP's platform so that customers can leverage SAP's and Nvidia's physical artificial intelligence (AI) services together."
Karl Fahrbach, Chief Partner Officer (CPO) of SAP, made the remarks in an interview with Seoul Economic Daily on Thursday at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, where "SAP Sapphire 2026" was held. Fahrbach is one of the C-level executives overseeing SAP's overall business. His main role is to strengthen SAP's software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecosystem through collaboration between SAP and its partner companies around the world.
Fahrbach's comments are interpreted as a plan to embed Nvidia's robot training and simulation applications "Omniverse" and "Isaac Sim" into SAP's enterprise SaaS, while integrating SAP's AI agent "Joule" into the two applications. "SAP's platform is open," Fahrbach stressed. "We have opened the door wide for partner companies like Nvidia to internalize their technological capabilities within the SAP platform."
SAP is building a partnership ecosystem in the physical AI business that encompasses not only Nvidia but also robot manufacturers. Eleven partner robot developers were unveiled at this year's Sapphire, including Boston Dynamics, AgiBot, and Unitree. "SAP partners with any company that adds value to our business," Fahrbach said. "Since physical AI is applied to manufacturing sites and other settings, we are also collaborating with companies that provide hardware-side support."
At the main exhibition hall of SAP Sapphire 2026, work demonstrations by Boston Dynamics' quadruped robot "Spot" and Aimbot Robotics' semi-humanoid robot "Unigon" captured the attention of visitors. The Spot and Unigon demonstrations are also interim results of the physical AI partnership between SAP and Nvidia. The two companies announced at the 2024 Sapphire event that they would establish a collaborative relationship on physical AI. SAP provided the business logic and Nvidia supplied the robot training software, enabling Spot and Unigon to be trained.
When asked whether he sees physical AI as a next-generation core business area, Fahrbach replied, "Of course," and explained, "SAP has been showcasing industrial robots equipped with SAP's robot control software as their brain performing tasks at various major conferences this year."
In the interview, Fahrbach also signaled that SAP will pursue more aggressive sales in the physical AI business going forward. "The clue to innovation is created at the stage of understanding what the customer wants," he said. "We are running programs such as the Field Deployed Engineer (FDE) program, which deploys SAP and system integration (SI) partner experts directly to client sites." He added, "We will expand the physical AI business based on SAP's partner ecosystem."
