Hardly any leader in the fast-growing technology environment in Europe integrates technical knowledge, strategic focus, and responsible innovation as much as the Chief Technology Officer and Chief AI Officer of SAP SE, Dr. Philipp Herzig. Headquartered in Germany, and running one of the most powerful enterprise software businesses in Europe, Dr. Philipp has become one of the most recognizable people in the way artificial intelligence is remaking the world of business: positioning SAP squarely at the center of that remaking.
Business AI to Global Technology Strategy
Dr. Philipp’s journey is notable not only for its destination, but for its trajectory. Unlike many executives who enter technology leadership from external roles, his career is deeply rooted in SAP itself. He has been with the company since 2009 as a working student, and this spot would become a journey of ten and a half years in engineering, architecture, product leadership, and innovation. This bottom-up development has provided him with a unique end-to-end knowledge of SAP technology stack, culture, and customers, and this experience has since become the basis of his leadership in the topmost level. As a holder of a PhD in computer science at the Dresden University of Technology, Dr. Philipp is able to apply academic rigor to real-world enterprise issues.
At the beginning of his career, he was a software engineer, architect, and product owner at the SAP Innovation Center in Potsdam where he assisted in the construction and scaling of cloud-native applications and distributed systems. His emphasis on constant integration and delivery, paired with a very high focus on engineering excellence, formed teams in industries like real estate and healthcare, and products such as SAP CPQ.
It was these formative years that set the foundation on his future capability to connect the state of the art technology to mission critical enterprise applications. The turning point in Dr. Philipp’s career was the moment when he started to integrate cross-portfolio through the large product portfolio of SAP. He significantly contributed to balancing the user experience, mobile strategy, and cross-product innovation at SAP at a time when enterprise customers were seeking seamless experiences, as opposed to solutions siloed. This was not the work of just a technical nature, but rather a strategic one to bring about the offerings of SAP into a cohesive customer-based platform. The experiences gained in the time of this integration would be important later when SAP ventured into the generative AI age.
Proven Tech Leadership
In 2024, SAP formally appointed Dr. Philipp as its Chief AI Officer, reflecting the growing recognition that artificial intelligence was no longer a supporting technology but a core business driver. He was promoted as CAIO and was now in charge of the world in defining, engineering, go-to-market strategy, marketing and enablement of the AI innovations at SAP.
When SAP became a part of the world of generative AI driven by his leadership, it began moving faster towards the new era, integrating AI as a core part of enterprise processes and not as an additional feature. Dr. Philipp has always stressed that Business AI should be relevant, reliable, and responsible, an ideology that makes the idea of SAP stand out from the consumer-oriented AI models. To its customers, AI does not mean experimentation at SAP; it means optimizing supply chains, financial processes, human resources, and scalable sustainability results.
Dr. Philipp guided the AI to be presented as grounded in actual business operations which ensured that the innovations offered by SAP provided quantifiable value without violating the rigid requirements of data privacy, security, or ethical application. Having acknowledged that he is a successful CAIO and the strategic value of AI to SAP in the future, the company broadened the responsibilities of Dr. Philipp by making him a Chief Technology Officer. In this two-fold position, he now manages SAP technology strategy, research, innovation, corporate development, ecosystem and partnerships, startup involvement, and incubation programs. His portfolio is focused not on AI and sustainability, which are the two most critical growth points in SAP, but also on new technologies like quantum computing, which implies his long-term perspective on technological disruption.
The Far-reaching Role as CTO
As CTO, Dr. Philipp acts as a catalyst across SAP’s vast ecosystem, collaborating with customers, academic institutions, startups, and technology partners. He has described AI as “the most transformational technology shift of our time,” noting that it is redefining not only industries, but also how enterprise software itself is built. This perspective places him squarely among Europe’s most forward-looking technology leaders—executives who are shaping platforms rather than products, and systems rather than point solutions. Beyond technology, Dr. Philipp is also a visible advocate for inclusive leadership and cultural progress within the tech industry. As executive sponsor of the Business Women Network chapter in Berlin and Potsdam, he actively supports diversity and talent development within SAP.
His greater impact has been acknowledged through various awards, such as the 40 Under 40 list by Capital, and the Vordenker:innen list by Handelsblatt, and the 30 until 2030 list by Wirtschaftswoche in 2024, which only serves to highlight his present high profile and his future possibilities. Dr. Philipp Dr. Philipp is a new breed of executives in the world of the largest tech giants in Europe, who is not only technologically savvy but strategically focused and socially aware of the role of technology in the community. His story of becoming an engineer and working his way up to the position of CTO and CAIO at SAP reflects the process of the same in Europe: turning into a participant in the world of technology and becoming an influencer of country innovation.
Dr. Philipp has been instrumental in shaping the future of AI-based businesses in the global arena in a way that Europe is not only competitive, but now consequential, in the digital world.