SAP, the world's leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider, has unveiled a blueprint for a new business it calls the "autonomous enterprise." To support the initiative, SAP said it will retool its entire product lineup around artificial intelligence (AI) agents. The German software giant also expressed confidence in becoming the world's top industrial AI platform operator by integrating Nvidia's solutions and Anthropic's AI models into its services.
SAP announced the strategy at its annual conference, "SAP Sapphire 2026," held Wednesday (local time) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Taking the stage as the keynote speaker, SAP CEO Christian Klein introduced the autonomous enterprise model as the company's new business direction. An autonomous enterprise refers to an information technology (IT) innovation that leverages AI to convert all corporate operations into automated systems.
Klein said a fully autonomous enterprise cannot be realized with general-purpose AI, citing its accuracy of only around 80%. He also noted clear limitations in using corporate internal data to train general-purpose AI services. "SAP can solve this problem," Klein said. "ERP, the brain of every enterprise, is the starting point for the solution." He added, "We are launching a new SAP AI platform that combines SAP's more than 50 years of ERP expertise with AI." The remarks reflected SAP's confidence that its ERP know-how in managing sensitive corporate data positions it to deliver AI that utilizes enterprise data more intelligently.
As part of its autonomous enterprise push, SAP unveiled a new product called the "SAP Business AI Platform." The platform is a toolkit that enables SAP customers to develop Joule, SAP's AI agent, tailored to their own environments. "The core of the new platform lies in a layer that richly understands data context," Klein said. "High-quality industry knowledge stored in ERP can be injected into Joule." He added, "Joule built on the Business AI Platform learns not only from data in SAP's ERP but also from data outside SAP systems, while learning the customer's operational framework."
At Sapphire 2026, SAP declared its transformation into a specialist in industrial AI. "The challenge facing enterprises today is creating business value with AI," Klein said. "We hope SAP's AI services mark the end of overwhelming workloads and the beginning of the autonomous enterprise."
SAP also disclosed a partnership with Anthropic for the Business AI Platform business. SAP currently uses its in-house model "SAP-RPT-1" and Microsoft's "Copilot" as AI foundation models powering its AI services. Anthropic's "Claude" has now been added to the mix. Appearing by video during the keynote, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei said, "Global enterprises run on SAP, and trusted AI needs to be there. Within SAP's platform, Claude will power AI agents across enterprise operations including finance, human resources (HR), and supply chain management."
Alongside the Business AI Platform, SAP unveiled a new "Autonomous Suite" service. The offering embeds AI agents into SAP's existing enterprise systems. SAP has prepared 224 AI agents and 51 AI assistants, with plans to gradually expand the number of agents. AI assistants are collections of AI agents that carry out specific business functions. For example, under the broad HR function, there are subfields such as recruiting, payroll, and workforce development, each served by a dedicated AI assistant. SAP envisions more than 200 AI agents coordinating tasks among themselves and executing directives to deliver near-perfect business automation.
SAP also unveiled a measure to allay security concerns around AI agents. To control autonomously operating AI agents, SAP has adopted Nvidia's "OpenShell." OpenShell is software that sets data access permissions and task execution environments for AI agents. It was developed to prevent AI agents from leaking sensitive corporate information externally and from performing tasks beyond their authorized scope. SAP said it has introduced OpenShell within the Autonomous Suite to control the operating boundaries of all AI agents. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also said via video during the keynote, "SAP has adopted OpenShell across its entire platform. AI agents will perform only permitted tasks, and every action can be traced."
During the keynote, senior executives from KPMG, JPMorgan, and H&M took the stage to share examples of how they use SAP's AI services. More than 3,000 KPMG consultants are currently using Joule. JPMorgan has decided to replace its general ledger with SAP's latest system. H&M has jointly developed an AI agent for store management with SAP.
