Some SAP board members told Klein to build only on OpenAI. He refused.
SAP CEO Christian Klein told diginomica this week that members of his Supervisory Board pushed him three years ago to stand the whole company on one model vendor: "There were people in my Supervisory Board who told me three years…
SAP CEO Christian Klein told diginomica this week that members of his Supervisory Board pushed him three years ago to stand the whole company on one model vendor: "There were people in my Supervisory Board who told me three years ago, 'Let's bet the whole company on OpenAI.'"
He did not do it. Klein said it is sometimes worth holding your own opinion and strategy rather than following what everyone tells you.
What SAP runs instead, in his words: "We have agents which have seen in the meantime five different models because we see that not one model always delivers the best outcome."
SAP says it can move a workload onto a different model inside a day, according to diginomica, and shifts to open-weight models when they match the frontier ones at lower total cost.
Klein said buyers increasingly ask for the total cost of ownership of tokens, because they can see token spend running away. OpenAI is not quoted in the piece.
Two things are worth separating. Redirecting an inference call is a technical change. Swapping the model under a live ERP process also means regression testing, audit evidence and revalidating the controls built on the old one.
How long would that second version take in your organisation?
Sources
Our file on SAP
- 5 Nov
SAP says its network handles over $8 trillion of trade a year. Its AI agent post names no customer.
- 5 Nov
SAP says AI agents handle more than 90% of a wholesaler's 100,000 supplier confirmations unaided. Its Takeda figures are forecasts.
- 5 Nov
SAP says Somerset Council moved about 8,500 staff off its 17-year-old payroll system in 13 months, on budget. Nobody named the budget.
- 5 Nov
SAP offered 300 AI agents. Workday's product chief, a former SAP executive, called the autonomous enterprise idea "cold and soulless".
- 4 Nov
SAP won a Dutch military cloud deal of up to ten years. The ministry says it does not end its SAP dependence.
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