SAP introduced the Autonomous Enterprise at Sapphire 2026 in Orlando. It represents a strategic repositioning of the company; SAP wants its software to autonomously execute business processes going forward. Three new layers form the foundation: a unified AI platform, an autonomous suite, and a new user experience.
The entire strategy stands or falls with the SAP Business AI Platform, which serves as the new foundation upon which everything rests. SAP is merging the SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Business Data Cloud, and SAP Business AI into a single environment. Central to this is the SAP Knowledge Graph: it contains all information about all business entities, processes, and relationships within a customer’s SAP landscape. The Knowledge Graph is designed to provide context for processes and actions within the SAP ecosystem. Ideally, the Knowledge Graph can already place questions, data, and processes in the correct context, ensuring that the appropriate actions are taken.
A Knowledge Graph is more or less a requirement in the world of AI. All major SaaS platforms are now building or working with a Knowledge Graph. What does make a big difference, however, is the quality and scope of each Knowledge Graph, which varies by company and by SaaS solution. Given SAP’s rich portfolio of business applications across many lines of business, SAP’s Knowledge Graph should be very broad.
What is an autonomous enterprise?
The Autonomous Enterprise is SAP’s vision for the future of enterprise software. Within an autonomous enterprise, AI agents execute business processes independently, from financial close to supply chain optimization, all under the watchful eye of people who set the strategic direction and verify that the work has been performed correctly. It is a fundamental shift; software no longer records what people have done, but performs the work itself. SAP positions this as the logical next step in innovation, where business context and built-in governance set it apart from generic AI solutions.
Joule Studio lets customers build agents themselves
Although SAP itself and many SAP partners build and deliver agents on the platform, there are always use cases where a customer wants or needs to build an agent themselves. Simply because it’s a more specific use case. Joule Studio is the new development environment for building enterprise agents, applications, and workflows. Developers can work with no-code, pro-code, and AI frameworks of their choice, all on SAP-managed infrastructure. All SAP customers and partners receive twelve months of free access to the Joule Studio design environment.
SAP Autonomous Suite
Based on the platform, SAP is introducing the SAP Autonomous Suite. For the first time, SAP’s primary business applications are designed to execute processes autonomously.
The suite includes more than 50 domain-specific Joule Assistants covering finance, supply chain, procurement, HCM, and customer experience. These assistants orchestrate more than 200 specialized agents. A concrete example demonstrated by SAP: the Autonomous Close Assistant can reduce the financial close process for a fiscal year from weeks to days by automating journal entries, reconciliations, and error resolution.
Industry AI
SAP also launched Industry AI, an initiative that presented seven autonomous scenarios for sector-specific processes, each with its own data models, process logic, and AI capabilities.
With Industry AI, SAP aims to leverage its deep industry knowledge to automate standard line-of-business processes. It has therefore designed specific AI assistants and agents for each of these seven industries. The seven scenarios and industries SAP is currently focusing on:
- Asset Management; oil, gas, and energy
- Adaptive Production; industrial manufacturing
- Commodity Management; agribusiness
- Project Delivery; professional services
- Regulated Manufacturing; life sciences
- Revenue Growth Management; consumer goods
- Unified Commerce; retail
Each scenario is designed for expansion into adjacent sectors. This is something SAP already has in the works and plans to make available later. They did not disclose when this will be expanded.
Joule Work, the new personal AI assistant
SAP is introducing Joule Work as the new way users interact with SAP software. Instead of navigating through applications, a user describes a desired action in an AI chatbot, and Joule then invokes the appropriate combination of workflows, data, and agents.
Joule Work will be available via desktop, mobile, and web. We’ve also learned that Joule Work will be available within Microsoft Teams and Slack.
SAP adoption and migration
RISE with SAP customers receive three Joule Assistants for free in the first year. SAP GROW customers, on the other hand, gain immediate access to the full portfolio upon onboarding. SAP GROW is for organizations that can quickly transition to the public cloud version of SAP, while RISE with SAP is a private cloud offering for large enterprise organizations that often deal with legacy systems and complex migration processes.
Speaking of migrations, SAP has also released a new agent-based migration toolkit designed to reduce ERP migration time by 35 percent. These agents can analyze legacy systems, clean up code, and automate configuration and testing processes. Given that many customers are still stuck with outdated ECC environments, this is a welcome addition.
Many SAP customers work with SAP partners, and those partners are now also receiving financial support to help customers with AI adoption. SAP is making a 100 million euro fund available for this purpose.
Partnerships
During SAP Sapphire, SAP also announced a whole series of partnerships. Claude from Anthropic will become one of the foundation models for Joule agents. NVIDIA is providing the secure runtime layer for Joule Studio via OpenShell. n8n is being integrated into Joule Studio for visual workflow orchestration. In addition, SAP is making a strategic investment in n8n, doubling its valuation to 5.2 billion dollars. AWS’s Amazon Athena has been added as a zero-copy data integration with the SAP Business Data Cloud.
Will SAP be autonomous?
The Autonomous Enterprise is SAP’s boldest bet in years. The foundation is solid, fifty years of business process data, a broad Knowledge Graph, and a serious partner ecosystem. Whether customers will actually let SAP run their business processes autonomously is another question entirely. It all comes down to Joule adoption. SAP knows this, which is why there’s a 100 million-euro fund to accelerate it. The vision is clear. The execution is the hard part.