SAP acquires tabular AI firm Prior Labs in $1.16B push
sap announced the acquisition of 18-month-old german ai startup prior labs for over $500m cash upfront. the enterprise giant committed €1 billion over four years to build an ai lab for structured data. meanwhile, sap blocked openclaw agents, restricting api access to endorsed architectures like its joule agents and nvidia's nemoclaw.
SAP acquired German startup Prior Labs, creators of the TabPFN tabular foundation models, for over $500 million in cash. The enterprise software giant committed €1 billion over four years to expand the 18-month-old lab into a dedicated research unit for structured data AI. The company stated the lab will operate independently to maintain research velocity and keep its open-source models available, while integrating directly with SAP AI Core and Business Data Cloud.
Simultaneously, SAP is moving to control agentic AI access to its platforms. The company updated its API policy to ban unauthorized AI agents, specifically targeting OpenClaw. SAP designated its own Joule Agents and Nvidia’s NemoClaw—which utilizes the Nvidia Agent Toolkit integrated with Joule in March—as the only authorized agent architectures for its customers.