SAP SESAP CEO says voice/AI will replace keyboard input in SAP's business systems, with AI agents already optimizing a customer's inventory by 20%.

SAP CEO Christian Klein predicts that typing data into business systems will end within two to three years at the software giant, calling voice the next workplace advantage. "The end of the keyboard is near," Klein said, pointing to the strength of voice recognition in large language models and saying the remaining work is translating voice into business language and business data. He said SAP coworkers will increasingly use voice to ask analytical questions, trigger operational workflows, and make entries such as performance feedback and pipeline updates, adding that the technological capabilities exist and the challenge is execution. Klein, 44, the youngest CEO of a major company listed on Germany's DAX index, said AI delivers value only when applied horizontally across a whole business rather than as an efficiency hack inside one division, and cited a large consumer goods customer where SAP is building an end-to-end planning scenario with agents that helps optimize inventory by 20%. Speaking at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, he also warned that geopolitics is reshaping software requirements, with companies asking how to operate in a more fragmented world of sovereignty rules, geo-locking, and export controls, and said Europe is a superpower in regulation but not in unity.
SAP SESAP CEO says voice/AI will replace keyboard input in SAP's business systems, with AI agents already optimizing a customer's inventory by 20%.