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SAP has completed its acquisition of Dremio, adding an open data lakehouse platform to SAP Business Data Cloud to support unified access to SAP and non-SAP data for analytics and agentic AI.
SAP completed its acquisition of Dremio on July 6, 2026, following the agreement announced in May. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition expands SAP Business Data Cloud with Dremio's open, high-performance data lakehouse capabilities, targeting enterprise environments where data is distributed across SAP and non-SAP systems.
The acquisition reflects the growing importance of enterprise data architecture as organizations move beyond AI pilots toward production deployments. Fragmented data, inconsistent business context, and the need to move or duplicate information across systems can complicate analytics and AI initiatives. SAP plans to use Dremio to provide a more unified data foundation for analytical and AI workloads while preserving access to data across heterogeneous environments.
Building an Apache Iceberg-Native Data Foundation
Dremio brings Apache Iceberg-native data management capabilities to SAP Business Data Cloud. SAP's original acquisition announcement said the integration would enable SAP and non-SAP data to coexist on an open foundation without requiring data movement or format conversion. Federated analytics can then extend across enterprise data sources while SAP HANA Cloud provides its in-memory engine for transactional and operational workloads.
Apache Iceberg provides an open table format that allows multiple processing engines to work with the same underlying data. Dremio's platform processes Iceberg data natively and supports federated queries across external data sources, providing organizations with an alternative to architectures that depend heavily on copying and transforming data between platforms.
For enterprises developing AI agents, this architecture could help address one of the more difficult aspects of production AI: providing models and agents with governed access to data together with the business context needed to interpret it correctly.
Open Catalog and Semantic Context
Another component of the acquisition is Dremio's Open Catalog, based on Apache Polaris and the Apache Iceberg REST Catalog API. SAP plans to use the catalog as a discovery and semantic layer within SAP Business Data Cloud, providing SAP and non-SAP processing engines with access to information including business meaning, relationships, access rights, and data lineage.
SAP has also said the catalog will contribute to the foundation of the SAP Knowledge Graph, linking business relationships, organizational structures, regulatory classifications, and lineage across systems.
This semantic layer is particularly relevant to agentic AI because access to raw enterprise data alone does not necessarily provide sufficient context for an AI system to interpret that data correctly. Common definitions, relationships, permissions, and lineage can help establish a more consistent information environment for AI agents operating across enterprise applications and data platforms.
Serverless Architecture Supports Variable Analytics Demand
Dremio also adds a serverless and elastic execution architecture to SAP's data portfolio. The platform can scale computing resources as workloads increase and reduce them as demand subsides, rather than requiring organizations to provision fixed capacity for peak workloads.
Dremio currently combines its Iceberg-native platform with federated querying, a semantic layer, autonomous platform-management capabilities, and access controls designed to extend from users and AI agents to underlying data sources. Its platform also supports connections between enterprise data and AI agents, including through Model Context Protocol interfaces.
These capabilities could become increasingly significant as organizations deploy larger numbers of AI agents whose data requirements fluctuate and whose access must remain governed according to enterprise security policies.
SAP Extends Its Open Data and AI Strategy
Dremio has contributed to open-source projects including Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, and Apache Arrow. When announcing the acquisition, SAP said it intended to continue investing in those projects.
The acquisition strengthens SAP's effort to position Business Data Cloud as a common data layer spanning both SAP applications and external enterprise systems. Rather than requiring all information to be consolidated into a proprietary storage architecture, the combination emphasizes open table formats, federated access, semantic context, and interoperability across processing engines.
For enterprises pursuing agentic AI, the significance extends beyond adding another data platform to SAP's portfolio. The larger issue is whether organizations can provide AI agents with governed, contextualized access to operational and business data across heterogeneous systems. Dremio gives SAP additional technology to address that challenge while expanding the role of open data architectures within SAP Business Data Cloud.
Related ARC Insights
ARC Advisory Group has published several related analyses examining the data architecture, governance, interoperability, and contextual foundations required to support enterprise and industrial AI. These perspectives provide additional context for SAP’s acquisition of Dremio and the broader shift toward open, governed data environments for agentic AI.
Orchestrating the Collaborative Autonomous Enterprise: Aligning SAP Digital Manufacturing with Trusted AI
Taming the Agentic Swamp: Anchoring Autonomy with an Industrial-Grade Data Fabric
The Context Crisis: Decoupling Data, Defending IP, and the Missing Link for Agentic AI
Together, these analyses highlight why open data architectures, semantic context, governance, and interoperability are becoming increasingly important as enterprises move from experimental AI deployments toward scalable agentic AI systems.