SAP to acquire Prior Labs in push to scale tabular AI capabilities
SAP has agreed to acquire artificial intelligence startup Prior Labs, in a move aimed at strengthening its capabilities in models designed for structured business data.SAP agrees to acquire Prior Labs, committing over $1.1 billion to scale tabular AI research, with the deal expected to close by mid-2026 pending approval.Prior Labs will operate independently, with its tabular foundation models set to be integrated across SAPs AI Core, Business Data Cloud, and Joule platforms.The move follows SAPs acquisition of Dremio and expands its push into domain-specific AI focused on structured enterprise data use cases. The German software company said it plans to invest more than €1 billion ($1.1 billion) over the next four years to expand Prior Labs into a global research lab focused on tabular foundation models. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to regulatory approval, with closing expected in the second or third quarter of 2026. Prior Labs will continue to operate as an independent unit after the deal is completed. SAP said this structure is intended to maintain research speed while linking new developments directly to its enterprise software products. Unlike large language models, which are primarily trained on text, tabular foundation models are designed to