SAP’s AI Take-Up Stalls at 3% Even as Microsoft Pact and Cloud Migrations Gather Pace

SAP's aggressive AI push struggles: only 3% of customers use Business AI in production; 77% prefer Microsoft Copilot. Stock down 29% YTD despite cloud revenue up 27%.

The disconnect between SAP’s aggressive push into artificial intelligence and its customers’ actual adoption has rarely been starker. While the German software giant has bolted Joule into 35 products, launched a low-code agent builder and introduced an Agent-to-Agent protocol, just 3% of clients surveyed by the DSAG are using SAP Business AI in production. At the same time, the stock has lost nearly 29% of its value since the start of the year, reflecting a market that is far from convinced.

The vast majority of AI-active SAP customers — 77% — are turning to non-SAP tools such as Microsoft Copilot instead. That gap underscores a structural hurdle: Joule is only available under RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP contracts, locking out the thousands of companies still running on-premise installations. With support for ECC 6.0 ending in 2027, more than 10,000 customers worldwide face a hard migration decision, and SAP is betting that Joule will be the reason they move to the cloud. For now, the numbers suggest that bet has yet to land.

To accelerate that shift, SAP and Microsoft are doubling down on their partnership. Speaking at the Sapphire conference, both companies said they aim to more than double the number of customers participating in their joint cloud-migration initiative by the end of 2026. A global team of product engineers has been assembled to help clients lift legacy ERP systems onto Azure more quickly. Beyond migration, the pair are building a shared AI platform designed to turn enterprise data directly into intelligent workflows.

Joule itself continues to expand. The Q1 release made Joule Studio generally available — a no-code/low-code builder on the SAP Business Technology Platform that lets firms create their own agents and link them to external data sources, APIs and third-party tools. A new Agent-to-Agent protocol, delivered via the SAP AI Agent Hub, allows agents to communicate not just within SAP systems but with outside vendor platforms. In finance, Joule now translates e-invoicing errors into plain language, while a Dispute Resolution Agent automates root-cause analysis of invoice disagreements. For project management, a dedicated setup agent in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition cuts the time needed to configure new projects.

The operational side, meanwhile, continues to hum. In the first quarter, cloud revenue rose 27% on a currency-adjusted basis to just under €6 billion, while the cloud backlog surged past the €21 billion mark. Management has held its full-year guidance, though it warns that the second quarter will see a slower growth rate due to one-off effects. That caution, combined with the persistent stock slide, has left investors uneasy. On Monday, SAP shares fell another 2% to €144.10, trading well below the 200-day moving average — a chart pattern that signals lingering bearish pressure.

The stock did stage a partial recovery from its 52-week low of €137.54 set on April 9, recently changing hands at €146.42 on XETRA. The annual dividend of €2.50 per share was paid on May 8, with the ex-date on May 6. But the real catalyst will be whether the expanded Joule ecosystem and the deepened Microsoft alliance can finally close the adoption gap. The next DSAG survey will provide an early reading — and the progress of those 10,000 ECC customers racing toward the 2027 deadline will offer a much bigger one.