SAP CEO Confirms End of Subscription Pricing: AI Usage-Based Billing Coming, Forward-Deployed Engineering Teams Starting July

Bloomberg·high signal

SAP CEO Christian Klein confirmed the company is moving away from per-seat subscriptions to AI consumption-based pricing, stating 'AI is so powerful and will automate numerous tasks, so there is no reason to stick with subscription-based billing.' SAP has shifted bundled services into discrete consumption catalogs including Joule, Datasphere, and Document AI. New 'forward-deployed engineering' teams start in July 2026 to help customers build AI applications on SAP's technology — a services play that mirrors Palantir's model.