WALLDORF, Germany, Jan. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP SE (NYSE: SAP)
CEO Bill McDermott today announced a
series of planned investments for SAP's operations in France over the next five years to accelerate
the company's digital strategy and support France's growing position as a hub of
innovation.
The move includes:
- Opening the second SAP.iO Foundry location in Europe to provide more than 50 startups with
mentorship, technology and access to the vibrant SAP ecosystem
- Investment by SAP.iO Fund in French startups in the seed or
Series A round
- Spend by SAP of €150 million in research and development
annually over the next five years
- Acquisition of Recast.AI to accelerate development of
SAP® Leonardo Machine Learning capabilities
Signaling its continued support for France, SAP estimates a more than €2 billion
spend over five years, intended to accelerate the company's fast
growth in the cloud and advance a technology community focused on
machine learning (ML), blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and
software as a service (SaaS). The step reflects SAP's global
strategy – fueled by the SAP Leonardo digital innovation system –
to help every organization become an intelligent enterprise. SAP
will focus on startups that build solutions complementary to the
SAP Leonardo system to foster fast collaboration and global
scale.
"There is a real sense of economic momentum in France," Bill
McDermott, CEO, SAP, said after a meeting with French
President Emmanuel Macron.
"President Macron's bold embrace of the digital world will help
France rise to an enviable
position as a global innovation leader. We see immense potential in
the entrepreneurial spirit of France to disrupt business models, create
modern jobs and unleash exciting new opportunities that help the
world run better."
For the first time, the incubation and innovation activities SAP
undertakes in France include
investment in startups with special focus on global impact, such as
sustainability and climate change, where France is taking a leadership role. This new
focus on social impact will complement the SAP.iO program's
strategic investments, which align with core businesses and
technologies of SAP. The startups, led by dynamic entrepreneurs,
play a critical role in extending SAP's footprint and creating
high-value use cases for customers.
Recast.AI Acquisition to Accelerate Natural Language
Processing Capabilities
Recast.AI provides a development environment – software,
technology and applications – that uses natural language, for
example, chatbots. Recast.AI's technology matches the requirements
of conversational chatbots and allows high-performance natural
language processing that supports more than 20 languages.
The acquisition will help SAP enhance the natural language
processing capabilities in SAP solutions to help customers enjoy an
improved user experience. SAP aims to simplify complex business
interactions and processes by employing conversational user
experience technology. The intention is to have applications speak
to SAP software users in natural language. SAP created the SAP
CoPilot digital assistant, a Web application, and an in-house
platform to build conversational applications. SAP intends to use
this platform across a wide breadth of its portfolio.
Recast.AI was founded in 2015, emerging from French coding
school "42," and is currently located at the incubator "Station F."
The company has grown quickly and today serves international
customers in France, including
large banks and insurance and tech companies. Recast.AI provides a
modern ML-based technical architecture and owns proprietary
algorithms that understand natural language. Its team of highly
talented data scientists and engineers will strengthen ML
development at SAP.
SAP is acquiring Recast.AI through its direct French subsidiary
SAP France Holding, a limited liability company. Both companies
agreed not to disclose details of the transaction.
SAP France celebrated its
30-year anniversary in 2017. Thousands of organizations in
France – public and private – rely
on SAP solutions and services to help them run at their best. In
addition to hosting two of the 19 SAP Labs of SAP Labs Network, the
company opened a flagship SAP Leonardo Center location in
Paris last year. The location
harnesses technologies such as AI and ML to deliver greater value
to customers across the region. Innovation is core to operations in
France. It includes plans to
develop the France Innovation hub with the opening of Sports
Center, an SAP Future Cities initiative and the extension of the
SAP Leonardo Center location, which has already hosted more than
30,000 visitors since its opening.
Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at
@sapnews.
About SAP
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SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From
back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to
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together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively
to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services
enable more than 365,000 business and public sector customers to
operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For
more information, visit www.sap.com.
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