Skip to main content
SAPIn development

‘The end of the keyboard is near’: Christian Klein predicts voice translation will be the next workplace advantage

What happened

SAP predicts that data input via typing will end at the firm within two to three years, to be replaced by voice recognition technology that can translate voice into business language and data.

Source

Article excerpt

Highlighted: the sentence this signal was extracted from

The English engineer, Henry Mill, submitted the first-ever patent for a "machine transcribing letters" in 1714. It never actually went into production, but it was a forerunner of the typewriter and then the electronic keyboard: 312 years later, Christian Klein, CEO of software giant SAP, is noting the end of an era. "The end of the keyboard is near," he tells me. "When you encounter voice recognition from many of these large language models, [it] is super strong. Now we have to do some work to translate voice into business language and business data." The deleterious effects of AI on the humble keyboard might not be top of the list of business leaders' priorities when it comes to mapping out the technological future. But SAP's prediction that "data-inputting" via typing will end in the next two to three years at the firm has significance well beyond the death of QWERTY. "We are now giving our coworker tool more and more skills," Klein says. "The future will be, for sure, that you are not typing any data information into an SAP system. You can instead ask certain analytical questions with your voice. You can trigger operational task workflows. You can also make entries in the system with your voice - performance feedback, pipeline entries, et cetera. The technological capabilities are there, it really is now about the execution." Read more: The most honest prediction for...

Keep reading with a free account

The rest of this article, and every signal for SAP, is in your free account.

Extracted by Autobound

From the Signal API record
Event
In development

What this signalsWork in development often leads to new buying for tools, data and services.

Product
voice recognition for business data
Location
Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

More in development signals at other companies

The full record

From the Signal API record

Details

Release type
Feature

Topics and mentions

Product tags

  • online technology
  • general technology
  • future tech
  • audio
  • data

Extraction

Confidence
90%
Detected
Sep 16, 2026
signal_type
news
signal_subtype
is_developing

Use this data

Get every in development signal for SAP and the companies you sell to, in the tools you already use.

  1. Ask Claude about it

    Connect Autobound to Claude, Claude Code or Cursor with MCP. Then ask: “What changed at SAP this week?”

  2. Send it to your own tools

    The Signal API returns in development signals for any list of companies as JSON, for your CRM, warehouse or app.

  3. Try it free

    Sign up and spend your free credits on the companies you sell to.

    Start Free1,000 free credits

The API returns more than this page shows

This page shows a preview. The full news record in the Signal API and MCP can also have these 8 fields. Some fields are empty for some signals.

Company

  • linkedin_urlValue in the API
  • industriesValue in the API
  • employee_count_lowValue in the API
  • employee_count_highValue in the API
  • revenueValue in the API
  • descriptionValue in the API

Signal

  • signal_nameValue in the API
  • associationValue in the API
Show the full JSONThe record on this page and the API request

GET /v1/signals/86855c9d-6bad-8e2b-1f39-7a67757bbc7e returns this record as JSON. POST /v1/companies/enrich returns every signal for sap.com.

{
  "signal_id": "86855c9d-6bad-8e2b-1f39-7a67757bbc7e",
  "signal_type": "news",
  "signal_subtype": "is_developing",
  "detected_at": "2026-09-16T04:14:45+00:00",
  "company": {
    "name": "SAP",
    "domain": "sap.com"
  },
  "data": {
    "url": "https://fortune.com/2026/09/16/end-of-keyboard-near-christian-klein-sap-predicts-voice-translation-next-workplace-advantage/",
    "title": "‘The end of the keyboard is near’: Christian Klein predicts voice translation will be the next workplace advantage",
    "author": "Kamal Ahmed",
    "excerpt": "The English engineer, Henry Mill, submitted the first-ever patent for a “machine transcribing letters” in 1714. It never actually went into production, but it was a forerunner of the typewriter and then the electronic keyboard: 312 years later, Christian Klein, CEO of software giant SAP , is noting the end of an era. “The end of the keyboard is near,” he tells me. “When you encounter voice recognition from many of these large language models, [it] is super strong. Now we have to do some work to translate voice into business language and business data.” The deleterious effects of AI on the humble keyboard might not be top of the list of business leaders’ priorities when it comes to mapping out the technological future. But SAP’s prediction that “data-inputting” via typing will end in the next two to three years at the firm has significance well beyond the death of QWERTY. “We are now giving our coworker tool more and more skills,” Klein says. “The future will be, for sure, that you are not typing any data information into an SAP system. You can instead ask certain analytical questions with your voice. You can trigger operational task workflows. You can also make entries in the system with your voice - performance feedback, pipeline entries, et cetera. The technological capabilities are there, it really is now about the execution.” Read more: The most honest prediction for 2026...",
    "product": "voice recognition for business data",
    "summary": "SAP predicts that data input via typing will end at the firm within two to three years, to be replaced by voice recognition technology that can translate voice into business language and data.",
    "location": "Walldorf, Germany",
    "planning": true,
    "image_url": "https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/GettyImages-2256965878-e1769527807538.jpg?resize=1200,600",
    "confidence": 0.9,
    "product_data": {
      "name": "voice recognition for business data",
      "full_text": "voice recognition from many of these large language models",
      "fuzzy_match": false,
      "release_type": "feature"
    },
    "product_tags": [
      "online_technology",
      "general_technology",
      "future_tech",
      "audio",
      "data"
    ],
    "published_at": "2026-09-16T04:14:45Z",
    "location_data": [
      {
        "city": "Walldorf",
        "state": "Baden-Württemberg",
        "region": "Western Europe",
        "country": "Germany",
        "continent": "Europe",
        "fuzzy_match": false
      }
    ],
    "article_sentence": "But SAP’s prediction that “data-inputting” via typing will end in the next two to three years at the firm has significance well beyond the death of QWERTY."
  }
}

Long text fields are shortened on this page.

Looking up one signal by its id is free. Enrich costs 2 credits per signal returned; a call with no results is free.