GoKawiilBy OpenAI COO’s own admission last February, ‘we have not yet really seen AI penetrate enterprise business processes.’ But for enterprise software giant SAP, whose stock has dropped significantly in 2026 in part from the ‘SaaSpocalypse’, the issue is still front and center.
On Monday, the European heavyweight announced its intention to acquire German AI startup Prior Labs for an undisclosed amount. Pending regulatory approval, SAP plans to invest €1 billion (approximately $1.16 billion) into the business over the next four years to grow it into an AI lab focused on structured data — the tables and databases where enterprise information typically sits.
SAP declined to disclose how much it spent on the acquisition itself, but sources told Pathfounders that this was a healthy exit: an “almost all cash” deal, with well over half a billion dollars in cash up front for the startup’s founders — Frank Hutter, Noah Hollmann and Sauraj Gambhir.
The trio cofounded Prior Labs just 18 months ago with a focus on tabular foundation models (TFMs) — AI models that can make predictions from data that sits in tables and databases. This is potentially a better fit for enterprises than language models. It is certainly a better fit for SAP, whose widely used software products for accounting, HR, procurement and expense management rely on its database.
However, Germany’s most valuable company also seems be playing defense as the tech industry marches towards agentic AI. While it works to create its own AI lab, the company has blocked OpenClaw and any other agent tech that it has not explicitly authorized, The Information was first to spot.
In response to a request for comment, SAP’s press department referred TechCrunch’s to the company’s latest API policy, which does say that SAP “prohibits” AI agents from accessing its products through its API except for those that are “SAP-endorsed architectures.”
Authorized architectures of course include SAP’s own offering, Joule Agents, still in beta, which lets customers create their own agents. Nvidia also announced in March that SAP’s Joule supports Nvidia’s Agent Toolkit, which is software for managing agents. This toolkit is the foundation for Nvidia’s enterprise-ready, security-focused OpenClaw competitor, NemoClaw. Hence SAP customers will be authorized to use NemoClaw agents.
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