SAP has reported revenue of €36.8bn for 2025, up 8% on 2024, despite what Christian Klein, chief executive office, called a “rough start to the year” caused by geopolitical tariff turmoil engendered by the US Trump presidency, in a press conference.
The supplier also reported Q4 revenue of €9.864bn, up 3% on the same year-ago quarter.
In a statement, Klein said: “Q4 was a strong cloud quarter, with bookings resulting in 30% Total Cloud Backlog growth to a record €77bn. The significant Current Cloud Backlog growth in Q4 has laid a strong foundation for accelerating total revenue growth through 2027. SAP Business AI has become a main driver for growth as it was included in two thirds of our Q4 cloud order entry, combined with strong AI adoption across the ERP Suite.”
Dominik Asam, chief financial officer, SAP added: “We closed 2025 on a high note, delivering strong operating profit and free cash flow ahead of our expectations. This performance reflects focused execution, financial discipline, and the continued trust our customers place in us as the North Star for their digital transformation. As evidenced by continued strong growth, well ahead of the market, in SaaS and PaaS, we are confident that our strategy and operational discipline will continue to drive long-term value creation.”
In the press conference, Klein stressed SAP’s position as “by far the biggest tech company in Europe”, and the importance of that with respect to digital sovereignty, a hot topic due to current geopolitical conditions. He also said over-regulation in Europe, in comparison with the US and China, is retarding the sufficiently speedy growth of technology startups – in an industry which, he repeatedly said, is the “fastest moving” of all.
He also cautioned that European countries will need to skill up their people in artificial intelligence. “China and the US are moving superfast there”.
The supplier noted its announcement, in November, of a stage in what it calls its “vision for European digital sovereignty with the launch of EU AI Cloud. SAP now offers a truly full-stack sovereign cloud offering, empowering customers to select the right level of sovereignty and deployment for their needs, whether in SAP’s own data centres, on trusted European infrastructure or as a fully managed solution on-site”.
In terms of the most burning IT industry topic of today, the rise and likely development of artificial intelligence, he and Asam argued that SAP will win in business AI, since its technology holds its customers business data in their enterprise applications, while companies at the infrastructure layer of chips and cloud data centre provision will not.
Cloud revenue for the full year was, stated SAP, up 23% to €21.02bn. Its Cloud ERP Suite revenue was up 28% to €18.12bn. Cloud and software revenue was up 9% to €32.54bn and services revenue was down 2% to €4.26bn.
The supplier reported progress in its ‘Rise with SAP’ programme, aimed at moving customers to the cloud and to use its ERP system, S/4, based on its in-memory database Hana. Rise was launched as a ‘business transformation as a service’ programme in 2021.
Rise customers who “continued to choose” the programme in Q4 2025 reportedly included Adidas, Bertelsmann, BioNTech, Daimler Truck, Deloitte, Électricité de France, Fresenius Digital Technology, H&M Group, His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, Nokia, Pirelli, Toyota, Ultragaz, and Weir Group.
In the press conference, Klein highlighted H&M and healthcare technology company Fresenius as users of SAP’s AI capabilities, which include its generative AI-based Joule assistants that can manage AI agents that carry out tasks across the applications in its cloud Business Suite.
He said H&M is using SAP AI capabilities to provide a more personalised shopping experience and Fresenius to save time for doctors and nurses in patient management.
The supplier also stated that, among others, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce SMR, and SA Power Networks went live on SAP S/4 Hana Cloud in the fourth quarter. Additionally, KPMG, Müller Holding, and Snowflake chose ‘Grow with SAP’, a mid-market programme for customers wishing to move to the cloud, launched in 2023.
In the fourth quarter, SAP said its cloud revenue performance was particularly strong in APJ and EMEA and solid in the Americas region. The UK, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, South Korea, and Spain had what the supplier said was outstanding performance.
SAP also noted a collaboration with Snowflake, announced in November, reportedly enabling customers to use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud and SAP Business Data Cloud together. It also noted increased collaboration with Bleu, Capgemini and Mistral AI in France, announced in November.