# Superpowered spreadsheets? SAP closes buyout of tabular AI startup Prior Labs > Source: > Published: 2026-07-17 11:17:03+00:00 [AI](/tag/ai/) Germany’s SAP has completed its buyout of AI firm Prior Labs – a startup that specialises in models that operate on tabular data, or spreadsheets. The ERP heavyweight swooped on the Berlin-based firm just 18 months after its launch. SAP founder Hans Werner-Hector had invested at seed stage. Prior Labs has created a range of “tabular foundation models (TFMs)” that have been pretrained exclusively on “billions” of synthetic tasks, it said. "Instead of re-optimizing weights for every new dataset, TabPFN encodes inductive biases, priors, and optimization strategies and applies them to your data via in-context learning. That means one forward pass → high-quality predictions in seconds," [the AI lab says](https://docs.priorlabs.ai/overview?ref=thestack.technology). (A technical report on its TabPFN-3 model is [ here](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.13986?ref=thestack.technology).) ## Get the full story: Subscribe for free Join peers managing over $100 billion in annual IT spend and subscribe to unlock full access to The Stack’s analysis and events. [Subscribe now](https://www.thestack.technology/membership/) Already a member? [Sign in](https://www.thestack.technology/signin/)