The company has established a Customer Value Group at the board level to align sales and support around customer outcomes tied to AI deployment. SAP is also backing the effort with a €100 million partner fund to accelerate agent development. The specific mechanics of how hiring freezes will be enforced and which business units face the deepest cuts remain undisclosed.
For enterprise clients and their counsel, this matters because SAP is moving from AI experimentation to execution—and pricing will follow. The company plans to shift to a hybrid, consumption-based pricing model in Q3 2026, bundling core AI capabilities while billing separately for autonomous agent actions. Enterprises currently evaluating S/4HANA transformations should factor in both the new pricing structure and SAP's clear signal that AI-driven automation is now the company's primary investment thesis. The cost discipline SAP is imposing on itself suggests the vendor expects clients to demand measurable ROI from AI deployments, not just feature availability.