SAP Targets 200 Autonomous AI Agents with Dremio and ABAP Upgrades, Yet Shares Crawl Back from Lows

SAP files for Dremio acquisition to unify data infrastructure and rolls out AI-powered agents for ABAP developers. Stock trades 44% below high; analysts see upside if cloud revenue grows.

SAP is moving aggressively to turn its artificial intelligence ambitions into reality, announcing two concrete steps that tackle the data infrastructure and developer tooling challenges head-on. The German enterprise software giant has filed for regulatory approval to acquire Dremio, a US specialist in data lakehouse technology, while simultaneously rolling out AI-powered agents for its core ABAP programming environment. The moves come as SAP’s stock, though recovering from recent lows, still trades more than 40% below its high of last year.

The Dremio acquisition, registered with Germany’s Federal Cartel Office on 19 May 2026, addresses what Chief Technology Officer Philipp Herzig calls the real bottleneck in enterprise AI. “Many AI projects fail not because of the models but because of poorly prepared data,” Herzig said. Dremio’s technology allows companies to process structured and unstructured data directly without physically moving it, turning fragmented data landscapes into a unified foundation. That foundation is critical for SAP’s plan to deploy over 200 specialised AI agents that can autonomously manage business processes. The capability will be embedded directly into the SAP Business Data Cloud.

On the development side, SAP is integrating AI directly into its ecosystem. ABAP, the programming language that underpins SAP’s core systems, is used by roughly five million developers worldwide. In January 2026 the company released SAP-ABAP-1, a specialised language model capable of understanding and explaining ABAP code. Now, in the second quarter of 2026, the first Custom Code Migration Agent is due to go live, automatically identifying and fixing issues in custom code. Additional agents for modernising older Web Dynpro applications to SAP Fiori are expected later in the year. SAP is also introducing a consumption-based pricing model for the AI features in SAP Joule for Developers.

Analysts see considerable upside if the strategy delivers. Jefferies reaffirmed a €230 price target on 23 May 2026, citing platform synergies. Deutsche Bank set a target of €200 and UBS €205. The DZ Bank is more cautious at €155, barely above the current level. The shares closed on Friday at €152.10, representing a weekly gain of 4.48% and a rise of roughly 11% from the 52-week low touched on 13 May. Still, the stock has lost almost 43% over the past twelve months and remains 44% below the 52-week high of €271.60 reached in June 2025.

The next big test for the market’s faith in SAP’s AI narrative comes on 23 July 2026, when the company reports second-quarter and first-half results. Analysts currently forecast full-year earnings per share of €7.22 for 2026. Whether the Dremio integration and the developer agent rollouts have started to leave measurable traces in cloud revenue will be the deciding factor for a stock that has yet to convince investors the recovery has staying power.