Kicking the ankle-biters loudly, but foolishly, proclaiming SAP can’t cut it in the AI Economy, Christian Klein’s company delivered powerful Q3 results with cloud growth accelerating to 26% at $7.5 billion and current cloud backlog climbing to to 28% growth and totaling $27 billion.
Klein emphasized that customers are embracing SAP’s vision for the AI future — what it calls the Autonomous Enterprise — and that the Q3 results reflect that. Here’s Klein from the Q3 announcement:
“Our customers are investing in the technology behind [Autonomous Enterprise] – from the cloud and data foundation to our Business AI. They see that Joule Work makes the business case for their transformation more attractive than ever.”
What I find to be most impressive in SAP’s Q3 results is its ongoing ability to build significant customer excitement for the AI future while also proving to them that they can simultaneously derive significant value from SAP’s long history with enterprise apps, data, security, and business-process and industry expertise.
While the too-cool-for-school crowd has been playing Mean Girls regarding SAP’s future — it seems they feel five decades of unmatched experience with global enterprises is a millstone rather than a hugely valuable asset — Klein and company have put together an impressive and enviable growth trajectory over the past six quarters for one simple reason: global corporations and mid-sized enterprises believe that SAP isn’t bolting AI onto its traditional products but rather has infused AI into its core technology while also delivering an ambitious portfolio of new-product innovation.
And this table, showing cloud revenue and growth over the past six quarters, shows that with unmistakable clarity:
| Quarter | Q2 ’25 | Q3 ’25 | Q4 ’25 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud revenue | $5.75B | $5.92B | $6.3B | $6.9B | $7.1B | $7.5B |
| Growth rate | 24% | 27% | 26% | 27% | 24% | 26% |
As I’ve noted multiple times over the past couple of years, another mark of SAP’s ongoing success is that those growth rates are far higher — from about 40% greater to 150% greater — than those put up by other players in the enterprise apps/agents/data/platform space, including Oracle, Workday, Salesforce, and Microsoft.
Final Thought
I’ll have some additional thoughts about SAP’s momentum next week following the Q3 earnings call, but let me leave you with a few quick observations:
- Look for Klein to once again tout the SAP ecosystem as a prime mover in driving these excellent results.
- SAP expects full-year revenue to come in toward the high end of its guidance, which would likely amount to about $29.1 billion, up 24%.
- It’s good to see SAP’s ongoing pipeline strength: for Q3, current cloud backlog was up 28% to $27 billion compared to Q2’s 26% growth to $26.3 billion.
