SAP, the world's largest enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider, unveiled a blueprint for its new "autonomous enterprise" business. The move represents SAP's bold bet to counter the software-as-a-service (SaaS) crisis triggered by artificial intelligence (AI) agents with enterprise-specific AI agents. SAP has also completed preparations to gain an edge in the AI services competition by embedding Anthropic's AI model and Nvidia's security solution into its SaaS offerings.
SAP announced the business direction at its annual conference, "SAP Sapphire 2026," held Wednesday at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Christian Klein, SAP's chief executive officer (CEO), took the keynote stage to introduce the autonomous enterprise model, SAP's new business focus. The autonomous enterprise refers to an information technology (IT) innovation that uses AI to convert all corporate operations into automated systems.
The autonomous enterprise is also SAP's move to overcome the "SaaS-pocalypse" that has emerged since early this year. The term combines SaaS with apocalypse, reflecting concerns that AI agent services such as Claude Code and OpenClo will replace existing SaaS offerings.
Klein pointed out the limitations of general-purpose AI agents, suggesting that SaaS-pocalypse fears are overblown. In particular, he said general-purpose AI alone cannot deliver a fully autonomous enterprise in the corporate AI services segment. The accuracy of general-purpose AI services remains at around 80 percent, a critical flaw that makes them unsuitable for mission-critical corporate tasks. He also noted clear constraints on using a company's internal data to train general-purpose AI services.
"ERP, the brain of every company, is the starting point for solving corporate AI adoption challenges," Klein said. "We are launching a new AI platform that combines SAP's more than 50 years of ERP expertise with AI." SAP has accumulated decades of ERP experience managing companies' sensitive data. This gives SAP confidence that it can thoroughly learn corporate data, accurately grasp user context, and deliver differentiated AI services.
As part of its autonomous enterprise business, SAP unveiled a new product called the "SAP Business AI Platform." The platform is a tool that allows SAP customers to develop AI agents tailored to their respective environments. "The core of the new platform lies in a layer that deeply understands data context," Klein said. "High-quality industry knowledge stored in ERP can be injected into Joule."
Anthropic has emerged as a key ally for the Business AI Platform. SAP added Anthropic's "Claude" to the list of AI foundation models that power AI services within the platform. Daniela Amodei, president of Anthropic, appeared via video during the keynote and said, "Within SAP's platform, Claude will power AI agents across corporate functions including finance, human resources (HR) and supply chain management."
Alongside the Business AI Platform, SAP is launching a new "Autonomous Suite" service. It is delivered by embedding AI agents into SAP's existing business systems. SAP has prepared 224 AI agents and 51 AI assistants, with plans to gradually increase the number of agents. An AI assistant is a collection of AI agents designed to perform specific tasks. For example, under the broad HR function, there are subfields such as recruiting, payroll management and workforce development, with AI assistants handling each area. SAP explained that when more than 200 AI agents coordinate tasks and execute instructions, they can achieve near-complete business automation.
SAP has also prepared a solution to dispel security concerns surrounding AI agents. Within the IT industry, there are concerns that AI agents may read sensitive data and perform tasks without authorization. The tool SAP has adopted to control AI agents is Nvidia's "OpenShell." OpenShell is software that allows users to configure AI agents' data access permissions and task execution environments. SAP said it has deployed OpenShell within the Autonomous Suite to control the scope of all AI agents' work. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also said via video during the keynote, "SAP has deployed OpenShell across its entire platform. AI agents only perform permitted tasks, and all activity logs can be traced."
Meanwhile, senior executives from KPMG, JPMorgan and H&M took the stage during the keynote to introduce their use cases of SAP's AI services. More than 3,000 KPMG consultants are currently using Joule. JPMorgan announced it has decided to replace the company's general ledger with SAP's latest system. H&M has developed a store management AI agent with SAP and is also planning a customer service AI offering.
