Who Founded SAP?

Dietmar Hopp is one of SAP's five co-founders. After leaving IBM in 1972, he helped build the company's first real-time financial accounting software for chemical maker ICI. He served as co-CEO of SAP from 1988 to 1998 and later sat on the Supervisory Board. Outside SAP he is known for the Dietmar Hopp Foundation and his backing of football club TSG Hoffenheim.

Dietmar Hopp was born in 1940 in Heidelberg.

Hopp was born on April 26, 1940. His co-founders, all former IBM employees, were Hans-Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira, Claus Wellenreuther and Hasso Plattner. He owns the German Bundesliga football club TSG Hoffenheim.

Hasso Plattner is the SAP co-founder most closely tied to its technology roadmap, from R/3 to the in-memory HANA database. He was co-CEO from 1988 to 2003 and chaired the Supervisory Board from 2003 until he stepped down at the May 2024 annual general meeting. He also founded the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam and funded the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.

Hasso Plattner was born in 1944 in Berlin.

Plattner was born on January 21, 1944. He chaired SAP's supervisory board from 2003 to 2024.

Hans-Werner Hector is one of SAP's five co-founders. He worked on the company's early software and later served on its Executive Board. He co-founded the Hector Foundation, which funds science, medical research and education for gifted children in Germany. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Klaus Tschira (1940-2015) was one of SAP's five co-founders and a long-serving member of its Executive Board and later its Supervisory Board. In 1995 he set up the Klaus Tschira Foundation, one of Germany's largest privately funded foundations, which supports natural sciences, mathematics and computer science.

Education: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Tschira was born on December 7, 1940 and died on March 31, 2015. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Wellenreuther co-founded SAP in 1972 alongside four colleagues. He specialized in financial accounting software and was instrumental in designing the foundational RF system, the predecessor to SAP R/1, before leaving the company in 1980 due to health reasons.

Claus Wellenreuther was born in 1935 in Mannheim. Education: University of Mannheim.

Wellenreuther was born on March 11, 1935 and died on March 21, 2026.