OpenAI services are coming to SAP's sovereign cloud in Germany in partnership with Microsoft.

SAP and OpenAI this week announced the launch of OpenAI for Germany, a partnership to bring AI capabilities to Germany’s public sector.

The sovereign service, planned for launch in 2026, will see OpenAI, SAP, and Microsoft offering OpenAI capabilities on SAP’s Delos Cloud, which runs on Microsoft Azure technology.

The companies said the collaboration will enable German public sector employees to "use AI safely and responsibly while meeting strict data sovereignty, security, and legal standards."

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said: “Germany has long been a pioneer in engineering and technology, so it’s no surprise that millions of Germans already use ChatGPT to make their lives easier, drive scientific breakthroughs, and build new businesses. With OpenAI for Germany, we’ll work with local partners to extend this potential to the public sector—helping to improve services and ensuring that the benefits of AI are shared across the country, and doing so in line with German values of trust and safety.”

Delos Cloud offers Microsoft Azure services managed by SAP independently from Microsoft, in data centers in Germany that are physically separate from Microsoft’s network and designed to meet German security requirements. Both it and Microsoft’s Bleu partnership in France with Orange and Capgemini are part of the company’s National Partner Cloud program.

Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, said, “Applied AI is what truly creates value. As a Business AI company with decades of experience serving public sector organizations, we believe OpenAI for Germany represents a huge step forward. We’re bringing together SAP Sovereign Cloud expertise with OpenAI’s leading AI technology to pave the way for AI solutions that are built in Germany, for Germany.”

SAP plans to expand its existing Delos Cloud infrastructure in Germany to 4,000 GPUs for AI workloads – though the services' current number of GPUs was not shared.

Subject to future demand, SAP said it aims to further invest in AI capabilities in Germany, scaling through existing SAP-owned infrastructure as well as in partnership with colocation providers and other partners.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, added: “With this partnership, we are looking forward to bringing more AI capabilities to Germany’s public sector. Azure as the platform for Delos Cloud will power this, helping to ensure AI is deployed with the highest standards of sovereignty, data privacy, regulatory compliance, and operational resilience—empowering public institutions to adopt AI confidently and responsibly.”

SAP services are available from dozens of data centers globally. The company says it has 32 locations in North America, two in South America, 32 in Europe, 15 in Africa, 20 in Asia, and four in Australasia. The German software giant has its own Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering, and recently said it is planning to invest more than €20 billion ($23.3bn) in expanding its sovereign cloud offering in Europe.