SAP has agreed to acquire TechWolf, a company based in Ghent, Belgium, that builds AI models of the work employees do and the skills they hold, the two companies announced on October 6, 2026. SAP plans to make the technology a core part of its SAP SuccessFactors portfolio. Financial terms were not disclosed.
According to the SAP announcement, the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approval. J.P. Morgan acted as exclusive financial advisor to TechWolf.
What SAP is buying
TechWolf sells what it calls a “context graph for work,” a proprietary data model meant to give employers a continuously updated view of the work their people do and the skills they have. The company builds that model from the HR and business systems customers already run, at three levels: the work itself, down to individual tasks; the skills people hold; and the external labor market. It then maps the result against each customer’s business strategy, according to the release.
The acquisition brings the graph, TechWolf’s AI models and its applied AI research team into SAP. The release says TechWolf’s open-source models have been downloaded more than two million times, that it offers EU and US data residency, and that it holds certifications including ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO/IEC 27001. Customers named in the announcement include HSBC, Atlas Copco Group, GSK, Ericsson, AMD, MetLife, PayPal and Booking.com.
SAP said TechWolf is expected to become an intelligent core of the SuccessFactors portfolio, powering skills mapping, workforce planning and organizational redesign. After closing, the two companies plan to co-develop AI-powered workforce and skills products to help organizations plan reskilling, internal mobility and hiring.
Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer of SAP Autonomous Suite and a member of the Extended Board of SAP SE, framed the deal around AI agents. He said TechWolf’s context graph “provides an excellent grounding layer for agent queries regarding work and skills planning and talent management,” and added:
“This grounding layer perfectly matches our strategy. It makes token usage more efficient, lowers the cost of deploying workforce agents and will make Joule more intelligent in AI-driven HR scenarios such as skills-based hiring, workforce planning and role redesign.”
Independence and non-SAP customers
Subject to closing and required consultation, TechWolf is expected to remain an independent entity led by co-founder and chief executive Andreas De Neve, headquartered in Ghent with offices in London, New York and San Francisco, SAP said. Its platform is to remain available to both SAP and non-SAP customers.
“We have spent eight years building the evidence layer to answer those questions,” De Neve said in the release, referring to how AI is reshaping work and what workforces need to look like as a result.
In a letter published on TechWolf’s website, De Neve wrote: “We will continue to serve all of our customers, whether they are SAP customers or not.” He said TechWolf began as a university project at Ghent University and that its US annual recurring revenue grew from $1 million to $15 million over the last 18 months. Co-founder and chief technology officer Jeroen Van Hautte will relocate to San Francisco to open a new office, and the existing leadership team, including chief operating officer Julie Scherpenseel and chief product officer Yasamin Karimi, stays in place.
The letter describes the deal as the largest acquisition of a venture-backed software company in Belgian history and the country’s largest employee liquidity event to date. It also says the founders, team and investors are contributing 3% of the sale’s equity value to a newly founded TechWolf Foundation, a charity.
Why it matters
For SuccessFactors customers, the announcement shows where SAP intends to take its HR software: SAP said the technology will power skills mapping, workforce planning and organizational redesign, and its product chief linked it to cheaper deployment of workforce agents and a more capable Joule in HR scenarios.
For TechWolf customers on other HR platforms, the key point is continuity. Both the SAP release and De Neve’s letter say the platform will stay available outside SAP’s customer base, and the letter notes that many customers already use TechWolf inside AI agents such as ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot. SAP’s release qualifies the independence arrangement as subject to closing and required consultation.
What to watch
The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending regulatory approval. Neither company disclosed the price, and the release did not give a timeline for the first jointly developed products.
The caveats
The figures on model downloads, revenue growth and the deal’s standing in Belgian technology history are the companies’ own statements and have not been independently verified.
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