Europe’s largest software manufacturer SAP wants to promote business with artificial intelligence (AI) with a major restructuring. The DAX heavyweight announced late on Tuesday evening that around 8,000 employees would be affected by the project. The Walldorf-based company had already cut 3,000 jobs around a year ago in order to become more streamlined and to concentrate more on the core business of software for corporate management. “With the planned transformation program, we are shifting more investments into strategic growth areas, primarily in AI,” said CEO Christian Klein. “We will continue to develop groundbreaking innovations in the future and at the same time improve the efficiency of our business processes.”
By the end of 2025, SAP will invest almost one billion euros in this area, said Klein. The hype about AI in the software industry was sparked last year by the release of the chatbot ChatGPT. Since then, all software companies have wanted a piece of the hoped-for large future cake and are investing a lot of money in the technology.
Part of the restructuring program was also a restructuring of the group structure, it was said. Volunteer programs and internal retraining are expected to take effect in most of the approximately 8,000 affected positions. Due to investments in growth areas, SAP expects the number of employees to be approximately at current levels at the end of the year. According to Klein, around two thirds of the 8,000 affected employees should be encouraged to walk through voluntary measures such as early retirement. The rest can qualify for other positions through retraining.