SAP has unveiled its new Autonomous Enterprise strategy at SAP Sapphire 2026, aiming to expand the use of AI agents across organisations and optimise business workflows with a stronger focus on operational outcomes and return on investment.
The new strategy includes a unified AI platform for building, contextualising, and governing AI agents, an autonomous suite designed to execute critical business operations, and a redesigned user experience intended to transform how teams interact with enterprise software.
According to Christian Klein, Chief Executive Officer of SAP, “in our customers’ mission-critical processes, ‘almost right’ is not good enough.” He added that by combining the SAP Business AI Platform with SAP Autonomous Suite, the company can embed AI agents directly into business processes, data environments, and governance layers to deliver more accurate, secure, and compliant outcomes.
SAP also introduced SAP Autonomous Suite, a new solution that embeds AI agents into the company’s existing enterprise applications to automate end-to-end business processes.
The suite includes more than 50 specialised Joule assistants across procurement, supply chain, finance, human capital management, and customer experience. These assistants coordinate a network of more than 200 specialised agents designed to perform task-specific operations.
Among the new capabilities is Autonomous Close Assistant, built to automate financial close processes including journal entries, reconciliations, and issue resolution, helping reduce workflows that traditionally take weeks into processes completed in days.
The company also introduced its Industry AI portfolio, comprising seven autonomous solutions tailored to industry-specific workflows, with dedicated data models, operational logic, and regulatory requirements aligned to sector needs.
Another major announcement was Joule Work, an evolution of SAP’s user experience designed to shift users away from navigating multiple applications and screens.
Under the new approach, users interact directly with Joule by defining a business objective, allowing the platform to orchestrate the required workflows, data, and AI agents needed to achieve that outcome. The system can also proactively surface insights, interactions, and task automation opportunities.
SAP said Joule Work will be available across desktop, mobile, and voice interfaces, both in SAP and non-SAP environments.
To accelerate adoption of Autonomous Enterprise, SAP also announced the launch of a €100 million investment fund to support partners building assistants and AI agents on SAP’s platform.
The funding will also be available to partners developing new AI agents or expanding enterprise use cases via SAP Business AI Platform and Joule Studio.
SAP additionally announced updates to its RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP offerings.
RISE with SAP customers will gain access to three AI assistants activated during the first year, while GROW with SAP customers will receive full access to the portfolio of agents and assistants from onboarding.
Customers running SAP S/4HANA on-premise and SAP ECC who commit to migrating to SAP Cloud ERP will also gain access to selected AI scenarios designed to support cloud transition initiatives.
During the event, SAP announced new strategic partnerships to support enterprise AI scalability and ecosystem expansion.
Key technology partners include:
Anthropic, with Claude integration into Joule agents
Amazon Web Services, enabling data integration between SAP Business Data Cloud and Amazon Athena
Google Cloud and Microsoft, supporting bi-directional agent interoperability
NVIDIA, providing runtime infrastructure for Joule Studio
Accenture and Palantir Technologies, focused on complex enterprise data migration scenarios
With the announcement, SAP reinforces its push toward a new generation of enterprise software powered by AI agents, positioning ERP platforms as increasingly autonomous, integrated, and real-time execution environments.
