Joule Work moved from an early-adopter program to a rollout for all SAP customers in the five months between Sapphire in May and SAP Connect in October, according to chief executive Christian Klein. Klein told the Las Vegas keynote audience that the rollout of Joule Work begins this month, and he put the user base at more than 400 million people who can now talk to SAP in their own language ("SAP Showcases"). At Sapphire, the desktop app and web client ran through an early-adopter program, with broad availability scheduled for later in the year ("SAP Aktie").

SAP says 110,000 of its own employees work in Joule Work

Klein said SAP worked with hundreds of customers on Joule Work since Sapphire. He described a conversation layer where users delegate tasks to agents, shared spaces for insights and work, and Joule Studio for customer-built agents ("SAP Showcases"). Inside SAP, he said, 110,000 employees run hundreds of thousands of tasks each day, with productivity gains above 20 percent in central functions such as human resources and finance ("SAP Showcases").

Customers described earlier stages of the same path.

Jan Gilg, SAP's global president of Customer Success and Americas, brought customers onto the stage. Christoph Buerki, head of procurement at Novartis, said his team co-developed and launched a pilot of the Joule Sourcing Assistant, with a goal of AI agents handling manual work so sourcing professionals can focus on strategy and supplier engagement ("SAP Puts"). Luca Dell'Orletta of Nestlé said the company's SAP S/4HANA transformation across 140 countries gives its Accounts Receivable Assistant a connected base for prioritizing collections ("SAP Puts").

Gilg also announced SAP Pay, which executes and reconciles supplier payments inside cloud enterprise resource planning once an invoice is approved ("SAP Showcases"). A separate partnership with Moody's embeds supplier risk monitoring data in SAP Ariba ("SAP Puts"). SAP's innovation guide lists the Moody's data and new supply chain Joule agents for general availability in the fourth quarter ("SAP Connect 2026: How New Agents").

SAP's agent targets run to more than 400 by year end

At Sapphire, ERP Today reported that the Autonomous Suite embeds 224 agents and 51 assistants ("Will SAP Be a Software Company"). On its second quarter earnings call, SAP said it would release close to 50 assistants by the end of the third quarter and more than 400 agents by year end ("SAP Q2 2026 Earnings Call"). In Las Vegas, Klein said SAP has created more than 20 assistants and over 200 agents since Sapphire, and he repeated the goal of more than 400 agents by year end ("SAP Showcases").

The three figures appear to measure different stages: demonstrated, built and generally available.

Siva Sundaresan, general manager and chief product officer for SAP SuccessFactors, supplied one stage-by-stage example. Assistants for payroll, human resources service, learning, recruiting, onboarding and career development are available this month, and a Workforce Planning Assistant is coming soon ("SAP Accelerates").

Klein positions deterministic agents as SAP's answer to probabilistic models

Klein told the audience that large language models return the most likely answer, while SAP's agents run inside application workflows that share the application's data, rules and audit trail. Customers set the level of autonomy for each process and keep human approval where risk is high ("SAP Showcases"). He described SAP Knowledge Graph as the source of that context, with more than 7 million data fields, 50 million tables, over 50,000 application programming interfaces and 400 data products ("SAP Showcases").

Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer of the Autonomous Suite, added that a sound data model sets the ceiling for any artificial intelligence ("SAP Showcases"). SAP agreed in March to acquire master data company Reltio, a deal I covered in a March post.

Klein also said the days of multimillion-dollar migration spend are over, pointing to an agent-led migration toolchain ("SAP Showcases"). SAP Signavio measures process value before and after a change, he said, which helps customers justify token spending ("SAP Showcases").

TechWolf brings a context graph for work to SuccessFactors

SAP and TechWolf announced an agreement for SAP to acquire the Ghent-based company, whose context graph for work maps the tasks inside jobs, the skills people apply and the external labor market. TechWolf builds it from the human resources and business systems customers connect ("SAP to Acquire"). SAP and TechWolf did not disclose terms, and the close is expected in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval ("SAP to Acquire").

Swaminathan said the graph gives agents a grounding layer that makes token use more efficient and lowers the cost of deploying workforce agents ("SAP to Acquire"). TechWolf chief executive Andreas De Neve said his company spent eight years building the evidence layer for questions about how AI reshapes work ("SAP to Acquire").

SAP plans to keep TechWolf independent, with its platform open to customers of other human resources suites ("SAP to Acquire").

Sundaresan cited research from the SAP SuccessFactors Future of Work Research Lab: 72 percent of executives believe organizations that say AI transforms their work are automating existing processes, and 88 percent say redesigning work and roles creates significant enterprise value ("SAP Accelerates").

SAP's security chief laid out an oversight model for agents

Marielle Ehrmann, SAP's chief security officer, closed the keynote. She said ransomware handovers that took eight hours now take 22 seconds with AI, and that 83 percent of enterprises use AI every day while 13 percent have visibility into it ("SAP Showcases"). She called for each agent to carry a verified owner and a risk tier, with access rights scoped to the task.

SAP's platform supports three levels of oversight: human approval, human monitoring and human override authority. Ehrmann said oversight tightens as an agent gains autonomy and summarized the principle as freedom within boundaries ("SAP Showcases").

SAP offers an AI Agent Hub in SAP LeanIX as a central inventory of enterprise agents, and the company says its governance architecture holds independent certification to the International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission 42001 standard for AI management systems ("SAP Puts"). Joule connects to third-party agents through the Agent2Agent protocol ("SAP Puts").

SAP describes outcome-based pricing and a choice of more than 70 models

Swaminathan said Joule Studio offers more than 70 models, a range that reduces lock-in and controls token costs ("SAP Showcases"). CIO.com reported that the assistants, agents, Joule Studio and Joule Work are SAP-managed products offered through the SAP for Me portal, with general availability beginning this month ("SAP Advances"). SAP's May financial analyst presentation references outcome-based pricing for the Autonomous Suite ("SAP Financial Analyst Conference 2026").

Rates for individual assistants were outside the Las Vegas announcements.

SAP reports third quarter results on October 21, with an analyst call to follow ("Q3 2026").