SAP Acquires Dremio and Prior Labs to Strengthen Enterprise AI Data Infrastructure

Summary

SAP announced the acquisitions of data lakehouse platform Dremio and tabular foundation model specialist Prior Labs, marking a major push to address data readiness challenges in enterprise AI deployment. The Dremio acquisition, expected to close in Q3 2026 pending regulatory approval, will integrate with SAP's Business Data Cloud and HANA Cloud offerings to combine SAP and non-SAP data for real-time AI workloads. Prior Labs will receive $1.17 billion in commitments over the next four years and will continue operating as an independent entity, bringing specialized AI capabilities for structured business data.

The acquisitions reflect a critical insight from SAP's CTO: enterprise AI deployments stall not because models lack quality, but because data isn't ready for AI agents. Industry analysis shows data infrastructure issues result in $108 billion in wasted AI spending annually. SAP's move is part of a broader portfolio transformation that includes its March 2026 announcement to acquire Reltio for master data management, positioning the company to support agentic AI at scale. SAP CEO Christian Klein plans to announce fundamental changes to the company's portfolio at SAP Sapphire next week, including governance frameworks for agentic AI and methods to infuse domain knowledge into AI agents.

• SAP's three-pronged acquisition strategy (Dremio, Prior Labs, Reltio) targets building an end-to-end data platform for enterprise agentic AI
• Data infrastructure waste costs enterprises $108 billion annually despite IT leaders expecting 76% increases in AI spending over the next two years