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German enterprise software giant SAP is putting some skin in the AI game.
The company announced today he has directly invested in three AI startups: JoinAnthropic (manufacturer of the Service Claude 2 LLM) and Aleph Alpha.
While the company didn’t specify the dollar amount of its investments, a spokesperson told VentureBeat that “they are a signal of SAP’s commitment to delivering valuable generative AI scenarios integrated into our portfolio of business applications, which are used daily by the biggest world leaders.
brands. As we continue to innovate, we are committed to using the best responsible AI technologies and tools on the market.
The news follows a more accurate dollar investment from SAP, backed by Sapphire Ventures, which announced a staggering increase $1 billion commitment for gen AI startups last week.
Why SAP must be a leader in enterprise AI
SAP is the third largest software company in the world in terms of annual revenue, behind only Microsoft and Oracle, and the largest outside the United States Its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software – the stack that connects the supply chain and a company’s operational applications – is used by these notable brands like oil megacorporation ExxonMobil and drugmaker Novartis. One of its most recognizable applications is the travel and business expense filing software All right.
SAP says it already has 26,000 customers worldwide using its existing SAP Business AI, which predates the investment announcement, showing the appetite for these types of services.
As such, the application of generative AI could have a huge impact on businesses and their customers worldwide. In fact, although VentureBeat does not offer investment advice, Bank of America analyst Frederic Boulan named SAP one of the top 10 stocks to invest in for generative AI gainsciting that “huge amounts of data about a company’s operations are kept in a company’s ERP system, making the software vital in any generative AI integration.”
In other words: SAP already has a treasure trove of data from all of its many global customers, and if it decided to offer generation AI services to these customers in conjunction with or through existing SAP offerings , it stands to reason that SAP could make a huge impact both on the customer side and on its own bottom line.
SAP customers launch AI pilots “immediately”
“Pilots and proof of concepts (PoCs) are underway with customers so that any interested customer can get started with SAP immediately,” the SAP spokesperson told VentureBeat in an emailed statement.
As to why SAP chose to invest in these three-generation AI startups: “The three companies – Aleph Alpha (Germany), Anthropic (US) and Cohere (Canada) are each recognized for their leadership , their innovation, and their unique vision to advance AI and the transformative potential of industries. And with our holistic approach to fostering an open ecosystem of enterprise AI, we believe that SAP should give customers choice and we are proud to invest in each of them.
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