Databricks and SAP expand their deal to put AI on SAP data

Databricks and SAP are expanding their partnership, with Genie, Lakeflow, Unity Gateway and Lakebase coming to SAP Databricks. SAP’s new Application Data Foundation will make data from its business software easier to reach. No release dates were given.

Databricks is bringing more of its AI and data tools to SAP customers, the company said on Friday. The two firms expanded their partnership at SAP’s TechEd conference in Berlin this week.

SAP Databricks, launched in February 2025, runs Databricks inside SAP’s Business Data Cloud. It will now get four more tools. Genie is an AI assistant, Lakeflow builds data pipelines, Unity Gateway keeps AI agents and costs in check, and Lakebase is a database for AI apps.

Databricks also plans to link Genie with Joule, SAP’s own AI assistant, so answers can appear inside SAP software. Neither company gave a release date.

SAP, meanwhile, unveiled SAP Application Data Foundation, a new way to reach data stored in its business software, whether in the cloud or on a company’s own servers. Databricks says firms have had to build custom pipelines to copy that data out, losing business context along the way.

That matters as SAP pushes customers off its older ECC software before mainstream support ends in 2027. More than 90% of Fortune 500 firms use SAP, Databricks says.

“Data is the foundation for enterprise AI,” said Philipp Herzig, SAP’s chief technology officer.

Trailer parts maker SAF-Holland says it now runs analyses five times faster after pulling more than 100 million records into SAP Databricks.

The deal helps both sides. SAP is pushing its Autonomous Enterprise plan to fill its software with AI agents, and has bought Prior Labs, whose AI reads tables of business data. Databricks, valued at $190B, wants more of the data those agents run on.