SAP plans job changes or buyouts for 8,000 employees in restructuring plan
SAP CEO Christian Klein speaks at a panel session on day three of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023.
Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images
SAP said on Tuesday that it aims to carry out voluntary buyouts or enable job changes for 8,000 employees as part of a restructuring program for 2024.
The German software company said in a statement that its headcount should remain the same at year end. SAP had about 108,000 full-time employees at the end of 2023, meaning that the restructuring will affect over 7% of the workforce.
SAP shares were up about 5% in extended trading. The stock jumped about 50% last year, its best performance since 2012, while the Nasdaq Composite index rose 43%.
SAP is aiming to reposition itself for faster growth, in part from artificial intelligence after revenue increased 5% year over year in the fourth quarter. Higher interest rates and concerns about the economy have hurt tech spending and led to layoffs across the industry, starting in late 2022. A year ago SAP said it would get rid of 3,000 roles.
The downsizing trend has continued to start 2024, with companies including Alphabet and Amazon announcing layoffs this month.
SAP said it now expects 10 billion euros ($10.85 billion) in 2025 adjusted operating profit. That’s down 2 billion euros from its previous outlook because of share-based compensation, but up by 500 million euros due to planned efficiencies from the restructuring.
CEO Christian Klein has been working to make SAP more cloud-centric, following similar shifts at Adobe, Microsoft and Oracle. Klein joined SAP in 1999. In 2019 he was named co-CEO with Jennifer Morgan to replace Bill McDermott, and in 2020 Klein became sole CEO. About 44% of SAP’s fourth-quarter revenue, totaling 8.47 billion euros, came from cloud services, up from 25% in 2019. That was above the consensus of 8.33 billion euros among analysts polled by LSEG.
WATCH: SAP CEO says 2024 will be year AI moves from discovery to execution
People walk next to the Google Cloud logo, during the 2025 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, March 4, 2025.
Albert Gea | Reuters
Google Cloud announced Thursday a multi-year partnership with artificial intelligence coding startup Replit, giving the search giant fresh firepower against the coding products of rivals, including Anthropic and Cursor.
Under the partnership, Replit will expand usage of Google Cloud services, add more of Google’s models onto its platform, and support AI coding use cases for enterprise customers.
Google will continue to be Replit’s primary cloud provider.
Replit, founded nearly a decade ago, is a leader in the fast-growing AI vibe-coding space.
In September, the startup closed a $250 million funding round that almost tripled its valuation to $3 billion, and said it grew annualized revenue from $2.8 million to $150 million in less than a year.
And new data from Ramp, a fintech company that also tracks enterprise spending on its platform, found that Replit had the fastest new customer growth among software vendors. Google, meanwhile, is adding new customers and spending faster than any other company on Ramp’s platform.
Put those together, and you get a clearer picture of why both companies see opportunity.
Vibe-coding emerged as a phenomenon earlier this year after AI models became more adept at generating code using only natural language prompts, allowing users with little experience in programming to use AI to create functioning code and potentially full applications.
Anthropic announced on Tuesday that its product Claude Code hit $1 billion in run-rate revenue. The coding startup Cursor, in November, closed a funding round that valued it at $29.3 billion, while also announcing it reached $1 billion in annualized revenue.
Replit, which bills itself as an easy-to-use product for non-developers, could help drive Google Cloud adoption among enterprises, and expand the reach of its AI efforts beyond traditional engineers.
Google is riding on the momentum of its new top-scoring model, Gemini 3. Shares of Alphabet have risen more than 12% since its debut.
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