SAP’s cloud is still booming, and that was enough to calm the AI-doom fears

SAP reported 22% cloud revenue growth to €6.28 billion in Q2 2026, beating forecasts and calming investor fears that AI would disrupt its subscription model. The cloud backlog jumped 26%, sending shares up over 6% in Frankfurt, though operating profit missed expectations and the company trimmed its 2026 profit outlook to €11.8-12.2 billion due to acquisition costs. CEO Christian Klein is investing heavily in AI through acquisitions like Dremio and Prior Labs, but analysts say SAP's AI story remains unconvincing.

SAP gave investors the number they wanted. Europe’s biggest software company said cloud revenue grew 22% to €6.28 billion in the second quarter, beating forecasts, SAP announced https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sap-quarterly-statement-q2-2026-302833633.html . Its cloud backlog, a measure of future sales, jumped 26%. The stock rose more than 6% in Frankfurt. That relief is the story. SAP’s shares are down about 35% this year, Bloomberg reported https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-23/sap-cloud-revenue-beats-estimates-as-legacy-support-nears-cutoff , on fears that AI will hollow out the enterprise-software subscription model https://thenextweb.com/news/nadella-reverse-information-paradox-ai-ip SAP is built on. It reported in a jittery week of tech earnings https://thenextweb.com/news/alphabet-q2-2026-capex-205bn-cloud-82 . A strong cloud quarter is the clearest answer SAP can give: its customers are still signing up, not walking away. A beat, and a guidance cut The picture was not all rosy. Operating profit rose 7% to €2.74 billion, but missed analyst hopes. SAP also trimmed its 2026 profit outlook to €11.8-12.2 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/sap-second-quarter-revenue-up-on-cloud-business-results-operating-profit-guidance-lowered-on-slowing-growth-926d4418 . The cut reflects the cost of two July acquisitions: the data firm Dremio and the AI startup Prior Labs https://thenextweb.com/news/sap-prior-labs-tabular-ai-deal-closed . SAP is spending hard to keep up. Chief executive Christian Klein has diverted budget and reshuffled management to fund an AI push https://thenextweb.com/news/big-tech-ai-capex-free-cash-flow-pressure , and the company cut hiring and travel to pay for it. It is pushing customers off older on-premise software and into the cloud. It will soon charge more to maintain legacy systems. The AI story investors aren’t sold on The bigger question is whether SAP’s own AI is any good. Klein casts it as an “Autonomous Enterprise” that grounds AI in a company’s core data. But some customers have questioned the value of SAP’s early AI tools, and analysts are lukewarm. “SAP still needs to do more to make its AI story compelling,” said Rebecca Wettemann of Valoir. “All its software running on the same platform isn’t a compelling reason to run enterprise AI there.” So the quarter cuts both ways. The cloud numbers say AI has not broken SAP’s business, and investors were glad to hear it. But SAP has not yet shown that AI will grow it either, even as it spends to fend off rivals like Anthropic https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-meta-10-billion-compute-deal-talks . For now, “we are not the disruption’s victim” was enough. Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.