Verified
SAP
Piloting- Enterprise software
- 113,076 staff (Sep 2026)
- 110,000 on Joule Work
- ~70% more code per developer (2026)
- €2B+ efficiency goal (2028)
SAP deploys AI by running its own products on itself first, as what it calls customer zero. Joule Work Desktop was live for more than 110,000 SAP employees in Oct 2026, and its developers code with Joule for ABAP, Claude Code and GitHub Copilot. SAP credits AI-first engineering with about 70% more code merged per developer in 2026, and its Oct 2026 results target a run rate of more than €2 billion in efficiencies by end of 2028. SAP limited new hiring mainly to core AI roles in Jul 2026.
sap.comTheir approach to AI
- The platform
- SAP runs its internal AI on its own SAP Business AI Platform, which includes SAP BTP, SAP AI Core and its generative AI hub. SAP employees have used Joule Work Desktop as their front end since Jul 2026, and SAP had about 230 internal AI use cases live in Apr 2026.
- The models
- SAP's platform offers more than 70 models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, Cohere and SAP itself (SAP-RPT), and Anthropic's Claude is among those powering Joule agents. SAP developers use Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and Joule for ABAP (Apr 2026).
- The reach
- Joule Work Desktop was live for more than 110,000 SAP employees in Oct 2026, close to SAP's 113,076 full-time equivalents. More than 90% of users reported a positive experience, but SAP has not published how many use it each week.
- The catch
- SAP's one return credited to AI with a defined measure is engineering output. SAP's 20% productivity figure for finance, HR and procurement comes without a method, the goal of more than €2 billion in efficiencies is a target for 2028, and SAP sells the tools it measures.
Snapshot
- Employees
- 113,076 (Sep 30, 2026)
- Full-time equivalents; 110,650 at Dec 31, 2025
- R&D spend
- €5.4B (first 9 months of 2026)
- IFRS, up 10% on the year; SAP charges AI tokens to the functions that use them
- AI/ML headcount
- Not disclosed
- About 40,000 developers (Christian Klein, Oct 2026); new hiring mainly for core AI roles since Jul 2026
- Who owns AI
- Christian Klein, CEO
- Reports the customer zero results; COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser runs processes and IT; CTO Philipp Herzig runs the Business AI Platform
- Platform
- SAP Business AI Platform and Joule
- Built in-house; staff work through Joule Work Desktop
- Models
- 70+ models, Claude among them
- OpenAI, Google, Mistral, Cohere and SAP's own; Claude Code and GitHub Copilot for coding
- Reach
- 110,000+ on Joule Work Desktop
- Oct 2026; more than 90% reported a positive experience
- Use cases
- ~230 internal use cases live
- Apr 2026, across engineering, support, services and go-to-market
Key findings
SAP credits AI with one internal return that has a defined measure: about 70% more code pull requests merged per developer in 2026 to date, reported with its Q3 2026 results on Oct 21, 2026. In Jul 2026, Christian Klein said AI tools lifted R&D productivity by an average of 30%, and Dominik Asam said that with those gains SAP no longer needed to hire additional R&D staff outside its new AI and data roles.
SAP said on Oct 6, 2026 that Joule Work was live with 110,000 of its employees and that SAP sees 20% productivity gains in finance, HR and procurement. About 10 weeks earlier, Christian Klein had told analysts that about 4,000 SAP staff were using Joule Work.
SAP set a goal in Jan 2026 of a run rate of about €2 billion in efficiencies from its internal AI transformation by the end of 2028, which Christian Klein put at 15% to 20% of addressable costs. SAP's Q2 and Q3 2026 results presentations put the goal at more than €2 billion, and SAP has not said how much of it has been reached.
SAP's executive board told staff in Jul 2026 that new hiring would focus mainly on core AI roles. SAP's workforce still grew 2% to 113,076 full-time equivalents in the year to Sep 30, 2026, and SAP's R&D costs rose faster than its R&D headcount as it charged AI tokens to the teams using them.
SAP reported in Apr 2026 that AI assists 100% of its support cases and resolves 20% of tickets on its own. SAP also said AI saves each consultant about 1 day a week and influenced €50 million of sales pipeline, but has put no cost or revenue figure on any of these results.
Where SAP sits
- Stage
- Piloting
SAP has reported one business return it credits to AI in the last 18 months, which places it at Piloting. SAP's Q3 2026 results on Oct 21, 2026 showed about 70% more code pull requests merged per developer in 2026 to date, which Christian Klein credited to SAP's roughly 40,000 developers working AI first. On rollout, SAP said on Oct 6, 2026 that Joule Work was live for 110,000 of its employees, and Klein reports the internal results on earnings calls. SAP falls short of Scaling because its other internal figures do not meet the return test. The 20% productivity gain in finance, HR and procurement (Oct 2026) has no stated method or cost equivalent, and the 12% support productivity gain (Apr 2026) measures ticket throughput. The €50 million of AI-influenced pipeline is not revenue, and the run rate of more than €2 billion in efficiencies (Oct 2026) is a target for the end of 2028, not a result.
How the stages are defined - Ownership
- CEO Christian Klein reports results; COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser runs processes and IT
- Platform
- Hybrid: Own Joule and Business AI Platform; frontier models and coding agents bought
- Models
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, Cohere and SAP's own, among 70+
- Hosting
- SAP AI Core on SAP-managed infrastructure; OpenAI via Microsoft Azure, Claude via AWS Bedrock, Gemini via Google Cloud Vertex AI; Mistral and Cohere on SAP's own cloud
- Reach
- Joule Work Desktop live for 110,000+ employees (Oct 2026)
How they deploy
Customer zero first
SAP deploys its own AI products inside the company before customers get them. An SAP IT presentation from Oct 2025 describes SAP IT as the first to deploy new SAP technology and to test everything internally before rollout to customers. Christian Klein said in Apr 2026 that SAP acts as its own customer zero across engineering, support, services and go-to-market, with a direct effect on its revenue and profit.
No lock-in to one model
SAP chooses models by task instead of committing to one provider. Dominik Asam said in Jul 2026 that SAP's strategy is not to be locked into any generic frontier model but to benefit from competition among them on performance and cost. Asam said SAP is adding model routing to get more value per token. SAP's Business AI Platform offered more than 70 models in Oct 2026.
Fewer hires, different hires
SAP is using AI to hold headcount growth below revenue growth. Christian Klein said in Oct 2025 that internal AI adoption would let headcount grow significantly more slowly than revenue. In Jul 2026, Klein said SAP would hire nowhere near as many people as planned for the year. Dominik Asam said on the same call that SAP would heavily slow R&D hiring outside new AI and data roles, since AI productivity gains meant there was no need to hire additional people. SAP's executive board told staff in Jul 2026 that new hiring would focus mainly on core AI roles, and Klein told the New York Times that he expects a very, very different workforce, not a smaller one.
Reskilling staff
SAP pairs the hiring limits with training. Christian Klein said in Jul 2026 that SAP was rolling out code camps and in-person AI training with a target of reaching more than 90% of employees within a few months. SAP's Q3 2026 results reported about 100 in-person AI code camps and trainings delivered. SAP's Q2 2026 results presentation also listed 2 hours a week of focused learning.
An efficiency target for 2028
SAP has tied its internal AI work to a financial goal: a run rate of about €2 billion in efficiencies by the end of 2028, set out in Jan 2026; SAP's Q2 and Q3 2026 results presentations put it at more than €2 billion. Dominik Asam said in Jul 2026 that SAP still targets total expense growth of 80% to 90% of revenue growth and that AI-driven productivity measures will pay off over the coming years.
- Deployment model
- SAP runs AI inside the company on its own products. SAP employees reach SAP and non-SAP data through Joule Work Desktop, and internal teams build extensions on SAP BTP and the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core. SAP IT deploys each new release before customers do. The Strategy & Operations board area under COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser covers business operations, processes and IT. Since Jul 1, 2026, CTO Philipp Herzig has led a Business AI Platform and CTO organization that combines SAP's core AI teams with parts of the former SAP BTP unit. Developers work with SAP's own Joule for ABAP alongside Anthropic's Claude Code and GitHub Copilot (Apr 2026).
- Model providers
- SAP's generative AI hub gives access to models from OpenAI (through Microsoft Azure), Google (through Vertex AI), Anthropic and Amazon (through AWS Bedrock) and Meta, according to SAP's own training material. SAP named Anthropic in May 2026 as a partner whose Claude models power Joule agents across HR, procurement and supply chain. SAP named Mistral AI and Cohere at the same time as providers of sovereign models on SAP's cloud infrastructure. SAP also builds its own models, including SAP-RPT for tabular business data and SAP-ABAP for code. Christian Klein said in Oct 2025 that a partnership with Perplexity lets Joule answer questions across SAP and non-SAP data.
- Data and infrastructure
- SAP AI Core is the runtime behind every SAP AI capability, with access to SAP and third-party models through one infrastructure that SAP says is not tied to any one cloud provider. SAP says customer data is never used to train SAP models or shared with third-party providers to train their models, and offers AI hosted by SAP and partners in European data centers. Christian Klein said in Oct 2025 that SAP will not build AI gigafactories and instead delivers its software and cloud with infrastructure partners. SAP has not said which cloud regions serve its internal Joule traffic or where Claude Code and GitHub Copilot run for its developers.
Platforms and internal tools
Joule and Joule Work DesktopJoule Sep 2023; Joule Work Desktop internally from Jul 2026
Joule is SAP's AI assistant across its applications. Joule Work is the interface that lets SAP employees ask questions in their own language and complete work across SAP and third-party data, grounded in the SAP Knowledge Graph. An SAP IT presentation from Oct 2025 set out the internal rollout in 3 phases: a pilot with 4,000 employees, an expansion to 26,000 and a global rollout to 110,000. Christian Klein said in Oct 2025 that Joule answers thousands of employee questions every day, from travel bookings to quoting support at quarter end.
- Users
- More than 110,000 with Joule Work Desktop (Q3 2026 results, Oct 2026)
SAP Business AI Platform (SAP BTP, SAP AI Core, generative AI hub)Unified platform May 2026
SAP Business AI Platform unifies SAP BTP, SAP Business Data Cloud and SAP Business AI into one governed environment, with SAP AI Core as the model runtime and Joule Studio for building agents. SAP reported more than 140 internal AI extensions built on SAP BTP and the generative AI hub in Apr 2026.
- Models
- 70+ models from SAP and partners
AI coding toolsBy Apr 2026
SAP developers use Joule for ABAP development together with third-party tools including Anthropic's Claude Code and GitHub Copilot, according to Christian Klein in Apr 2026. Klein said in Jul 2026 that SAP aims to deliver a complete agent in under 3 weeks with tools like Claude Code, and Dominik Asam said R&D has the highest token consumption in the company.
- Models
- Joule for ABAP, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot
Joule for Consultants
Joule for Consultants supports SAP's services staff with system configuration and custom code analysis; SAP said in Apr 2026 that its consultants save about 1 day a week with it.
Vendors and partners
AnthropicBy Apr 2026
Claude models for Joule agents; Claude Code for SAP developers · SAP named Claude in May 2026 among the foundation models its platform uses to power Joule agents across HR, procurement and supply chain.
Microsoft
OpenAI models through Azure in the generative AI hub; GitHub Copilot for developers · SAP and Microsoft also link Joule and Microsoft's Copilot through agent-to-agent interoperability (May 2026).
Amazon Web Services
Anthropic and Amazon models through AWS Bedrock; zero-copy data link to SAP Business Data Cloud
Google Cloud
Gemini models through Vertex AI; agent interoperability with Joule
Mistral AI and CohereMay 2026
Sovereign model options on SAP's own cloud infrastructure
NVIDIAMay 2026
OpenShell secure runtime for Joule Studio
PerplexityBy Oct 2025
Lets Joule answer questions across SAP and non-SAP data
Leadership
AI, data and platform leaders
Executives
AI org map
AI platform and product teams under the CEO; internal operations and IT under the COO; every function runs SAP's own AI first
SAP reorganized its leadership twice in 2026 around AI. From Apr 1, 2026, Thomas Saueressig became Chief Customer Officer over a Customer Value Group that took over sales from Christian Klein. From Jul 1, 2026, Klein split most of Muhammad Alam's Product & Engineering remit between Philipp Herzig, who leads a Business AI Platform and CTO organization, and Manoj Swaminathan, who leads an Autonomous Suite organization. Both report to Klein. Global Customer Support and Global Security and Cloud Compliance moved from the Customer Value Group to report to Klein in the interim, and a new Industry AI unit reports to COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser.
SAP has not disclosed how many AI specialists it employs. Christian Klein said in Oct 2026 that SAP's roughly 40,000 developers now work AI first, and SAP reported 38,735 full-time equivalents in research and development at Sep 30, 2026, up 2% in a year. Dominik Asam said in Jul 2026 that SAP had hired data scientists, data engineers and full-stack developers for industry AI in the prior 12 months and would now slow hiring for other roles. SAP's executive board limited new hiring mainly to core AI roles the same month.
Reporting lines
Chief Executive Officer
Strategy & Operations
Business operations, processes and IT, marketing and the Industry AI unit
Business AI Platform and CTO
Philipp Herzig, CTO
Core AI teams, data and analytics and parts of the former SAP BTP unit, from Jul 1, 2026
SAP Autonomous Suite
Finance and spend, supply chain, HR, customer experience and private cloud ERP product teams, from Jul 1, 2026
Global Customer Support
Moved from the Customer Value Group on Jul 1, 2026 and reports to Christian Klein in the interim; AI assists every support case
Customer Value Group
Thomas Saueressig, Chief Customer Officer
Sales, services, cloud infrastructure and cloud operations, from Apr 1, 2026
Product Experience & Advisory
Product adoption and telemetry; Alam's contract ends in Mar 2027
People & Culture
Gina Vargiu-Breuer, Chief People Officer
SAP's Executive Board page lists Christian Klein, Muhammad Alam, Dominik Asam, Thomas Saueressig, Sebastian Steinhaeuser and Gina Vargiu-Breuer, and its Extended Board page lists Philipp Herzig as CTO and Manoj Swaminathan under product and platform (checked Nov 9, 2026). SAP has not named a single executive who owns internal AI adoption. The reporting lines for Herzig and Swaminathan come from SAPinsider's account of Klein's Jul 2026 announcement. Bloomberg reported that SAP split Alam's duties among existing executives instead of naming a new chief product officer.
Where the AI workforce sits
Research and development
38,735 of 113,076 full-time equivalents at Sep 30, 2026; Christian Klein says about 40,000 developers work AI first.
~34%Sales and marketing
27,524 full-time equivalents at Sep 30, 2026; AI runs demand generation campaigns and customer research.
~24%Services
18,849 full-time equivalents at Sep 30, 2026; consultants use Joule for Consultants.
~17%Cloud, support, infrastructure and administration
Cloud and software, infrastructure and general and administration staff together at Sep 30, 2026. SAP does not split out a dedicated AI workforce.
~25%
Named people
Use cases
SAP reported about 230 internal AI use cases live in Apr 2026, across engineering, support, services, go-to-market and its central functions. SAP has published one return it credits to AI with a defined measure: AI-first engineering, with about 70% more code pull requests merged per developer in 2026 to date (Oct 2026). SAP's figures for finance, HR and procurement, support, consulting and demand generation are productivity, throughput, hours or pipeline measures without a cost or revenue equivalent. For the company as a whole, SAP targets a run rate of more than €2 billion in efficiencies by the end of 2028 (Oct 2026) and has not reported progress against it.
| Use case | Area | Status | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI-first software development SAP's developers write and review code with Joule for ABAP, Claude Code and GitHub Copilot, and SAP aims to deliver a complete agent in under 3 weeks. Christian Klein said in Apr 2026 that AI assistance raised developer productivity by over 30%, and in Jul 2026 that the gain averaged 30%. Dominik Asam said the gain meant SAP no longer needed to hire additional R&D staff outside its new AI and data roles. | Engineering | In production | About 70% more code merged per developer in 2026 to date, credited to AI-first work (Oct 2026)Source |
| Joule Work Desktop in finance, HR and procurement SAP's finance, HR and procurement staff use Joule Work Desktop to pull data and complete tasks across SAP and third-party systems in their own language. SAP said in Oct 2026 that it sees 20% productivity gains in these functions, without saying how the gain was measured or what it is worth. | Central functions | In production | |
| Employee questions and self-service Joule answers thousands of SAP employee questions every day, from simple tasks such as travel bookings to complex quoting support at quarter end, according to Christian Klein in Oct 2025. An SAP IT presentation from the same month reported 30% better access to information in search results and 30% faster navigation to the right content after Joule's internal rollout. | Firmwide | In production | |
| AI-assisted customer support Christian Klein said in Apr 2026 that AI assists 100% of SAP's support cases and resolves 20% of tickets on its own. Klein said SAP saw 12% higher productivity in its support function and handles significantly higher ticket volumes without a proportional rise in headcount. | Services & Support | In production | |
| Joule for Consultants SAP's consultants use Joule for Consultants for system configuration and custom code analysis, saving about 1 day a week each, which SAP said in Apr 2026 speeds up project delivery. | Services & Support | In production | |
| AI demand generation campaigns SAP uses AI to tailor outbound campaigns to each customer's situation and to automate them. Christian Klein said in Apr 2026 that the campaigns saved over 83,000 hours, directly influenced €50 million of additional pipeline and target the right customers up to 6 times more effectively. | Go-to-market | In production | |
| Customer research and sales planning SAP's sales teams use AI to research and prepare for customers and to plan sales. SAP's Q3 2026 results said the tools cut customer research and preparation time by up to 80% and make sales planning up to 50% faster. | Go-to-market | In production | |
| Case resolution agents and natural-language analytics SAP IT runs AI agents in SAP's own Sales and Service Cloud to route and research cases, which an Oct 2025 SAP IT presentation said cut case routing and research time by 10%. SAP IT also gives finance staff natural-language analytics, which the same presentation said can raise knowledge worker efficiency by up to 5%. | SAP IT | In production |
Adoption
SAP spread AI inside the company in stages. Joule launched in Sep 2023, and an SAP IT plan took it from a pilot with 4,000 employees to 26,000 and then to a global rollout to 110,000 (Oct 2025). Joule Work Desktop followed from Jul 2026. Christian Klein said on Jul 23, 2026 that about 4,000 SAP staff used Joule Work and that the desktop version would roll out internally over the next few weeks. SAP said on Oct 6, 2026 that Joule Work was live with 110,000 employees, close to its 113,076 full-time equivalents. SAP's Q2 2026 deck, published the same day as Klein's remarks, already showed more than 110,000 Joule Work Desktop users, a figure his remarks do not match. More than 90% of Joule Work Desktop users reported a positive experience (Oct 2026), but SAP has published no weekly or daily usage count. In engineering, about 40,000 developers work AI first, and SAP had about 230 internal AI use cases live in Apr 2026.
By the numbers
Rollout, first pilot to today
Sep 2023
SAP unveiled Joule, a generative AI assistant to be embedded across its cloud portfolio, from HR and finance to supply chain and procurement.
Jan 2024
SAP launched a €2 billion transformation program, centered on AI, that affected about 8,000 positions.
Jul 2024
Christian Klein said SAP expected savings in the triple-digit millions in 2024 from automating internal processes with AI through the generative AI hub, across HR, finance, supply chain, expenses and contracts.
Jan 2025
Chief AI Officer Philipp Herzig added the title of global CTO, and Sebastian Steinhaeuser joined the Executive Board to lead Strategy & Operations.
Oct 2025
An SAP IT presentation set out Joule's internal rollout as a pilot with 4,000 employees, an expansion to 26,000 and a global rollout to 110,000.
Oct 22, 2025
Christian Klein said Joule answers thousands of SAP employee questions every day and that internal AI adoption would let SAP's headcount grow significantly below revenue.
Jan 29, 2026
SAP set a goal of a run rate of about €2 billion in efficiencies from internal AI adoption by the end of 2028.
Apr 23, 2026
SAP reported about 230 internal AI use cases live and more than 140 AI extensions built on SAP BTP. SAP also reported developer productivity up by over 30% and AI assisting 100% of support cases.
Jul 23, 2026
Christian Klein said about 4,000 SAP staff were using Joule Work and that Joule Work Desktop would roll out internally over the following weeks.
Oct 6, 2026
SAP said Joule Work was live with 110,000 of its employees.
Economics & controls
Spend and ROI
Technology and R&D spend
SAP spent €5.4 billion on research and development in the first 9 months of 2026 under IFRS, up 10% on the year, while R&D full-time equivalents rose 2% to 38,735 at Sep 30, 2026. SAP does not publish a separate internal technology budget or its spending on internal AI.
What AI itself costs
SAP charges AI tokens to the functions that use them, and R&D has the highest token consumption, Dominik Asam said on Jul 23, 2026. Asam said R&D costs rose faster than R&D headcount in Q2 2026 (14% against 3%, as an analyst put it on the call) mainly because of AI tokens and a few highly paid AI hires. Asam said SAP is adding model routing to get more value per token. SAP has not published its total spending on AI tokens or tools.
Reported ROI
SAP's one internal return credited to AI with a defined measure is engineering output: about 70% more code pull requests merged per developer in 2026 to date (Oct 2026). For the company as a whole, SAP set a goal in Jan 2026 of a run rate of about €2 billion in efficiencies by the end of 2028, which Christian Klein put at 15% to 20% of addressable costs; SAP's Oct 2026 presentation shows more than €2 billion. SAP has not said how much of that it has reached. MarketBeat's summary of the Oct 21, 2026 call cited up to €3 billion of efficiency gains over 2 years, a figure SAP's own presentation does not show. Klein said in Jul 2024 that SAP expected savings in the triple-digit millions that year from automating internal processes with AI. Klein also credited SAP's 2025 profit performance partly to applying AI across the company, without giving AI's share.
Productivity markers
SAP reports several internal productivity figures that come without a cost, revenue or headcount equivalent. Christian Klein said in Oct 2026 that Joule Work Desktop brings 20% productivity gains in finance, HR and procurement. In Apr 2026, Klein said support productivity rose 12% as AI resolved 20% of tickets and that consultants save about 1 day a week. Klein also said then that AI demand generation saved over 83,000 hours and influenced €50 million of pipeline. SAP's Q3 2026 results added up to 80% less time on customer research and up to 50% faster sales planning.
Headcount
SAP had 113,076 full-time equivalents at Sep 30, 2026, up from 110,730 a year earlier and 110,650 at Dec 31, 2025. SAP said in Jul 2025 that targeted measures would affect about 1% to 2% of its global workforce in 2025. SAP's executive board limited new hiring mainly to core AI roles in Jul 2026. Dominik Asam said in Jul 2026 that R&D headcount would not rise further over the next 12 months. Christian Klein told the Australian Financial Review in Jun 2026 that within 3 to 4 years there is a chance no one will develop software inside SAP any more.
Governance and risk
AI ethics review
SAP governs AI through its Global AI Ethics Policy, which is based on the 10 principles of UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. SAP also has an AI Ethics Office, an internal Global AI Ethics Steering Committee of senior leaders and an external advisory panel. SAP says use cases go through several review steps depending on their risk, and that it holds ISO/IEC 42001 certification for its AI governance and for Joule, SAP AI Core and other Business AI products.
Data boundary
SAP says it does not share customer data with third-party model providers to train their models and that customer data is never used to train SAP's own models. Christian Klein said in Oct 2026 that SAP makes sure it uploads no customer data or process know-how into large language models.
Accuracy and agent reviews
Christian Klein said in Oct 2026 that SAP holds a daily agent review in which product managers report accuracy, and that he pushes teams to raise their test cases when accuracy reaches 95%. Klein said SAP traces every Joule Work query down to the data and ontology layer to improve response times and accuracy.
Workforce commitments
SAP's Jul 2026 memo framed its hiring limits as a reallocation of spending, not a round of layoffs, and Christian Klein has said existing staff can be retrained for AI work instead of let go. Dominik Asam said in Sep 2025 that AI is a catalyst that can be great or a catastrophe for a software company, depending on how fast it is implemented.
Recent signals
Oct 21, 2026
SAP's Q3 2026 results reported about 70% more code pull requests merged per developer in 2026 to date, Joule Work Desktop live for more than 110,000 employees and productivity gains of more than 20% across central functions, which Christian Klein gave as 20% on the call. SAP repeated the target of more than €2 billion in efficiencies by the end of 2028.
Oct 21, 2026
Christian Klein said SAP's roughly 40,000 developers now work AI first, that SAP uploads no customer data into large language models, and that Joule Work agents still need faster responses and better accuracy.
Oct 6, 2026
SAP said at SAP Connect that Joule Work was live with 110,000 of its employees, with 20% productivity gains in finance, HR and procurement, as the customer rollout began.
Jul 23, 2026
Christian Klein said AI tools raised R&D productivity by an average of 30%, that SAP would hire nowhere near as many people as planned, and that about 4,000 staff used Joule Work ahead of an internal desktop rollout.
Jul 2026
SAP's executive board told staff that new hiring would focus mainly on core AI roles and paused travel unrelated to AI, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg.
Jul 1, 2026
SAP moved most of Muhammad Alam's product and engineering remit into a Business AI Platform and CTO organization under Philipp Herzig and an Autonomous Suite organization under Manoj Swaminathan. Both report to Christian Klein during the transition.
Jun 2026
Christian Klein told the Australian Financial Review that software development is the function most exposed to AI and that no one may develop software inside SAP within 3 to 4 years.
May 13, 2026
SAP launched the SAP Business AI Platform at Sapphire and named Anthropic's Claude among the models powering Joule agents, with Mistral AI and Cohere offering sovereign models on SAP's cloud.
Apr 23, 2026
Christian Klein said SAP acts as its own customer zero, with developer productivity up by over 30%, AI assisting every support case and a run-rate efficiency goal of about €2 billion by the end of 2028.
Mar 2, 2026
Christian Klein told staff he would hand sales to Thomas Saueressig as Chief Customer Officer from Apr 1, 2026, in a board reorganization to focus on AI.
Jan 29, 2026
SAP set a goal of a run rate of about €2 billion in efficiencies from internal AI adoption by the end of 2028, about 15% to 20% of addressable costs.
Quick answers
- How does SAP deploy AI?
- SAP deploys AI by running its own products on itself first, as what it calls customer zero. Joule Work Desktop was live for more than 110,000 SAP employees in Oct 2026, and its developers code with Joule for ABAP, Claude Code and GitHub Copilot. SAP credits AI-first engineering with about 70% more code merged per developer in 2026, and its Oct 2026 results target a run rate of more than €2 billion in efficiencies by end of 2028. SAP limited new hiring mainly to core AI roles in Jul 2026.
- What does SAP use AI for?
- SAP reported about 230 internal AI use cases live in Apr 2026, across engineering, support, services, go-to-market and its central functions. SAP has published one return it credits to AI with a defined measure: AI-first engineering, with about 70% more code pull requests merged per developer in 2026 to date (Oct 2026). SAP's figures for finance, HR and procurement, support, consulting and demand generation are productivity, throughput, hours or pipeline measures without a cost or revenue equivalent. For the company as a whole, SAP targets a run rate of more than €2 billion in efficiencies by the end of 2028 (Oct 2026) and has not reported progress against it.
- Who leads AI at SAP?
- AI at SAP is led by Philipp Herzig (Chief Technology Officer; head of the Business AI Platform and CTO organization); Manoj Swaminathan (President and Chief Product Officer, SAP Autonomous Suite). Ownership of AI on the org chart: CEO Christian Klein reports results; COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser runs processes and IT.
- What AI platform does SAP use?
- SAP runs its internal AI on its own SAP Business AI Platform, which includes SAP BTP, SAP AI Core and its generative AI hub. SAP employees have used Joule Work Desktop as their front end since Jul 2026, and SAP had about 230 internal AI use cases live in Apr 2026.
- Which AI models does SAP use?
- SAP's platform offers more than 70 models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, Cohere and SAP itself (SAP-RPT), and Anthropic's Claude is among those powering Joule agents. SAP developers use Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and Joule for ABAP (Apr 2026).
- How many SAP employees use AI?
- Joule Work Desktop was live for more than 110,000 SAP employees in Oct 2026, close to SAP's 113,076 full-time equivalents. More than 90% of users reported a positive experience, but SAP has not published how many use it each week.
- What return has SAP reported from AI?
- SAP has reported one business return it credits to AI in the last 18 months, which places it at Piloting. SAP's Q3 2026 results on Oct 21, 2026 showed about 70% more code pull requests merged per developer in 2026 to date, which Christian Klein credited to SAP's roughly 40,000 developers working AI first. On rollout, SAP said on Oct 6, 2026 that Joule Work was live for 110,000 of its employees, and Klein reports the internal results on earnings calls. SAP falls short of Scaling because its other internal figures do not meet the return test. The 20% productivity gain in finance, HR and procurement (Oct 2026) has no stated method or cost equivalent, and the 12% support productivity gain (Apr 2026) measures ticket throughput. The €50 million of AI-influenced pipeline is not revenue, and the run rate of more than €2 billion in efficiencies (Oct 2026) is a target for the end of 2028, not a result.
Open questions
- How much of the target of more than €2 billion in efficiencies by the end of 2028 has SAP already reached, and how much of it comes from fewer hires, lower supplier spending or other costs?
- How did SAP measure the 20% productivity gain in finance, HR and procurement, and what is it worth in cost or headcount?
- How many SAP employees use Joule Work Desktop each week, given that SAP's Jul 2026 deck showed more than 110,000 users while Christian Klein said on the same day that about 4,000 used Joule Work?
- What do the 12% support productivity gain, the day a week saved per consultant and the €50 million of AI-influenced pipeline return in cost or revenue?
- How many AI and machine learning specialists does SAP employ, and how many core AI roles has it hired since the Jul 2026 memo?
- What does SAP spend on AI tokens and coding tools such as Claude Code and GitHub Copilot, and which clouds serve its internal Joule traffic?
- Which executive owns internal AI adoption at SAP after the 2026 reorganizations, given that Christian Klein reports the results and COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser runs processes and IT?
- Will the faster output per developer show up as lower R&D headcount, given that R&D full-time equivalents still rose 2% in the year to Sep 30, 2026?
Sources
SAP
- SAP Connect: SAP puts the Autonomous Enterprise to work (Oct 6, 2026)
- SAP Sapphire: SAP unveils the Autonomous Enterprise (May 2026)
- SAP announces Q3 2026 results (Oct 21, 2026)
- Executive Board
- Extended Board
- Christian Klein, CEO, biography
- Dominik Asam, CFO, biography
- Sebastian Steinhaeuser, COO, biography
- Thomas Saueressig, Chief Customer Officer, biography
- Muhammad Alam, Executive Board, biography
- Gina Vargiu-Breuer, Chief People Officer, biography
- Responsible AI at SAP
- SAP AI Core and the generative AI hub
- SAP Learning: getting started with the generative AI hub
- SAP IT presentation: Cost center to catalyst, SAP as customer zero (Oct 2025)
Filings, results and calls
- Q3 2026 results presentation (Oct 21, 2026)
- Quarterly Statement Q3 2026, employees by function (Oct 2026)
- Q2 2026 results presentation (Jul 23, 2026)
- Q2 2026 earnings call transcript via Webull (Jul 23, 2026)
- Q1 2026 results presentation (Apr 23, 2026)
- Q1 2026 earnings call transcript via JBizNews (Apr 23, 2026)
- Q4 and full-year 2025 results presentation (Jan 29, 2026)
- Q3 2025 earnings call transcript via Equibles (Oct 22, 2025)
- Integrated Report 2025, social data
- MarketBeat: what SAP said on its Q3 2026 earnings call (Oct 21, 2026)
News
- diginomica: SAP's record Q3 as the Autonomous Enterprise comes to life (Oct 2026)
- SAPinsider: SAP splits its product engineering organization (Jul 2026)
- SAPinsider: SAP Q4 2025 results and the €2 billion efficiency goal (Jan 2026)
- Bloomberg: SAP CEO Klein reorganizes board to focus on developing AI (Mar 2, 2026)
- Bloomberg Law: SAP gives AI product oversight to CEO and COO in reshuffle (2026)
- Pulse 2.0: Thomas Saueressig appointed Chief Customer Officer (Mar 2026)
- Börse Express: SAP Vorstand neu sortiert, Muhammad Alam to leave (Mar 2026)
- TechTarget: Changes to SAP leadership reflect AI, cloud shifts (Jan 2025)
- IBTimes UK: SAP freezes most hiring to focus on AI (Jul 2026)
- Fortune: SAP CFO Dominik Asam on AI and the workforce (Sep 24, 2025)
- ERP Today: SAP says AI could replace its coders (Jun 2026)
- Cloud Wars: SAP AI will slash $100 million in internal costs (Aug 2024)
- ASUG: SAP unveils generative AI assistant Joule (Sep 26, 2023)
Data confidence
- Confirmed
- Stated in a primary or reputable public source.
- Estimated
- Derived or approximated from public reporting.
- Unconfirmed
- Reported, but not yet corroborated.
SAP profile · Enterprise AI diffusion report by Imagine · facts checked against their sources on Nov 9, 2026
