SAP’s Grand AI Plan at Sapphire: Dremio, n8n, and 200 Agents, but the Stock Remains at Arm’s Length

SAP unveils 200+ AI agents, Dremio acquisition, and n8n investment for autonomous enterprise; stock down 45% over past year as market remains skeptical.

SAP used its annual Sapphire conference in Orlando to lay out an ambitious blueprint for the “autonomous enterprise,” but the market is giving the software giant little credit for its efforts. The stock slipped 0.87 percent on Wednesday to €141.62, extending a year-to-date decline of roughly 30 percent. Over the past twelve months, the shares have shed more than 45 percent of their value, and they now trade almost 28 percent below their 200-day moving average.

The centerpiece of SAP’s strategy is a suite of more than 200 specialized AI agents — including over 50 domain-specific Joule assistants — designed to execute business processes autonomously. These agents will be orchestrated through Joule Studio 2.0, which is set for release in June 2026, and governed by Agent Governance and Company Memory tools. The new Autonomous Suite bundles SAP’s Business Technology Platform, Business Data Cloud, and Business AI into a single offering aimed at embedding intelligence directly into the ERP core.

To shore up the data layer that powers those agents, SAP plans to acquire Dremio, the open-source lakehouse platform that promises to connect SAP and non-SAP data sources using Apache Iceberg as a native table format. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval, with closing expected in the third quarter of 2026. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

Parallel to that acquisition, SAP made a strategic investment in the Berlin-based automation startup n8n, whose valuation doubled to $5.2 billion as a result. n8n brings 1,400 enterprise customers and a developer community of 1.7 million users to the table. SAP intends to embed n8n’s technology natively into Joule Studio, allowing customers to build custom AI agents without deep coding. A €100 million fund has also been established to help partners deploy those assistants at end clients.

SAP is leaning on a broad ecosystem to support the platform. Nvidia is contributing OpenShell, which provides isolated runtime environments and security rules for agents. Google Cloud is rolling out X5 instances with 48 TB of memory for SAP HANA workloads. Anthropic’s Claude models serve as a reasoning engine for complex decision-making. The SAP Knowledge Graph, another new component, links business data and reveals how entities relate to one another, giving the agents context for their actions.

On the go-to-market front, SAP deepened its longstanding partnership with Microsoft. Azure now hosts the largest RISE with SAP production environment, and more than 60 percent of new RISE deployments in the first half of 2026 run on Microsoft’s cloud. The two companies plan to double the number of customers enrolled in the RISE Acceleration Program this year, and they are jointly developing Business Data Cloud Connect for Microsoft Fabric.

Operationally, SAP is sticking to its full-year guidance. Revenue from cloud and software is forecast between €36.3 billion and €36.8 billion in 2026, with non-IFRS operating profit expected at €11.9 billion to €12.3 billion. Cloud revenue alone is seen landing between €25.8 billion and €26.2 billion — though management has flagged a slowdown in the second quarter after a strong start to the year. The stock now sits just 2.39 percent above its 52-week low, underscoring the market’s caution.

The next major test comes on July 23, 2026, when SAP publishes its regular quarterly report. By then, the company will need to show whether its sprawling AI push — backed by two big bets on data integration and workflow automation — is translating into tangible results for customers, and ultimately for shareholders. The autonomous enterprise may be the vision, but the hard proof is still on the horizon.