German multinational software company SAP is betting big on business AI as a differentiator and aims to double the number of embedded AI use cases on its platform to 100 by the end of the year.“Business AI is, for us, key because it will differentiate our applications. We are not developing AI for the sake of AI,” said Christian Klein, global chief executive and member of the executive board of SAP SE.

He added that AI tooling and a semantic layer to understand data were also important to provide to customers, and that SAP is doing significant research and development on a foundational data model.

“Today we have over 50 embedded use cases… We will double the number of AI use cases by the end of this year,” Klein said, referring to the pre-trained AI applications embedded in its offerings, he said.

Use cases could be in areas like sourcing, supply chain, customer experience and sales, he said.

Klein was speaking at SAP’s annual conference Sapphire, where the company unveiled generative AI innovations and partnerships.

“By the end of this year, 80% of the most used tasks (on SAP’s cloud software) will be managed by Joule,” Klein said. Joule is SAP’s genAI assistant bot.As a result, its 300 million users will be able to do their work 20% more productively, Klein added.

The bot, which was launched last year, will be rolled out across several more of SAP’s solutions by the end of the year. SAP also announced plans to integrate Joule with Microsoft Copilot to deliver insights tapping into both SAP applications and Microsoft 365.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud and AI Group, speaking at the event, said that the collaboration brings the power of generative AI to unlock greater employee productivity, as part of the effort to help customers solve some of the most fundamental business challenges they face.

SAP will also add large language models from Amazon Web Services, Meta and Mistral to its gen AI hub.

SAP announced deeper collaboration with Nvidia, the AI chip making giant, to leverage Nvidia’s AI models and accelerated infrastructure to power its training of Joule and run its gen AI ABAP coding model.

Speaking virtually at the event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said, “This is the beginning of a new computing age, the beginning of a new industrial revolution.”

“Nvidia builds one of the most complex systems in the world, and we have one of the most complex supply chains in the world,” Huang said, citing its latest Blackwell system, which has around 600,000 parts, as an example.

He added that to provide AI infrastructure to the world, across AI supercomputers, AI factories, GPUs, CPUs, NVlink switches, ethernet nics, switches and so on, the company needs to unite the entire ecosystem of Taiwan companies.

New CEO of AWS Matt Garman announced at the event that the company’s generative AI platform Bedrock will be integrated with SAP’s gen AI hub, allowing customers access to models from Anthropic, Amazon, and so on, to combine with SAP systems’ data.

SAP said in a statement it is also expanding its partnership with Google Cloud, using business AI to help enterprises better predict and mitigate supply-chain risks and optimise inventory levels. SAP’s Joule and supply chain planning solution will be integrated with Google Cloud’s Gemini AI assistant and Google Cloud Cortex Framework’s data foundation.

The author was in Orlando at the invitation of SAP.

German multinational software company SAP is betting big on business AI as a differentiator and aims to double the number of embedded AI use cases on its platform to 100 by the end of the year.“Business AI is, for us, key because it will differentiate our applications. We are not developing AI for the sake of AI,” said Christian Klein, global chief executive and member of the executive board of SAP SE.

He added that AI tooling and a semantic layer to understand data were also important to provide to customers, and that SAP is doing significant research and development on a foundational data model.

“Today we have over 50 embedded use cases… We will double the number of AI use cases by the end of this year,” Klein said, referring to the pre-trained AI applications embedded in its offerings, he said.

Use cases could be in areas like sourcing, supply chain, customer experience and sales, he said.

Klein was speaking at SAP’s annual conference Sapphire, where the company unveiled generative AI innovations and partnerships.

“By the end of this year, 80% of the most used tasks (on SAP’s cloud software) will be managed by Joule,” Klein said. Joule is SAP’s genAI assistant bot.As a result, its 300 million users will be able to do their work 20% more productively, Klein added.

The bot, which was launched last year, will be rolled out across several more of SAP’s solutions by the end of the year. SAP also announced plans to integrate Joule with Microsoft Copilot to deliver insights tapping into both SAP applications and Microsoft 365.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud and AI Group, speaking at the event, said that the collaboration brings the power of generative AI to unlock greater employee productivity, as part of the effort to help customers solve some of the most fundamental business challenges they face.

SAP will also add large language models from Amazon Web Services, Meta and Mistral to its gen AI hub.

SAP announced deeper collaboration with Nvidia, the AI chip making giant, to leverage Nvidia’s AI models and accelerated infrastructure to power its training of Joule and run its gen AI ABAP coding model.

Speaking virtually at the event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said, “This is the beginning of a new computing age, the beginning of a new industrial revolution.”

“Nvidia builds one of the most complex systems in the world, and we have one of the most complex supply chains in the world,” Huang said, citing its latest Blackwell system, which has around 600,000 parts, as an example.

He added that to provide AI infrastructure to the world, across AI supercomputers, AI factories, GPUs, CPUs, NVlink switches, ethernet nics, switches and so on, the company needs to unite the entire ecosystem of Taiwan companies.

New CEO of AWS Matt Garman announced at the event that the company’s generative AI platform Bedrock will be integrated with SAP’s gen AI hub, allowing customers access to models from Anthropic, Amazon, and so on, to combine with SAP systems’ data.

SAP said in a statement it is also expanding its partnership with Google Cloud, using business AI to help enterprises better predict and mitigate supply-chain risks and optimise inventory levels. SAP’s Joule and supply chain planning solution will be integrated with Google Cloud’s Gemini AI assistant and Google Cloud Cortex Framework’s data foundation.

The author was in Orlando at the invitation of SAP.