We run SAP AI Lab — two of us, one in ML systems, the other in enterprise information systems; independent blog, endorsed by neither vendor. Wiring Azure OpenAI into SAP BTP is the most common "first AI project" for SAP architects in 2026, and we watched two attempts fail the same way before we got it right ourselves. Verified as of 2026-11-08.

Both teams started with the same sentence in their design doc: "register our Azure OpenAI endpoint in SAP AI Launchpad." There is no such registration. The Launchpad has no form where you paste your own *.openai.azure.com URL and API key. What actually exists are two genuinely different paths, and confusing them is the single biggest source of failed setups.

Path A: SAP-managed capacity — your keys are never involved

The Generative AI hub in SAP AI Core offers Azure OpenAI models ( gpt-4o , gpt-4o-mini , the gpt-4.1 family) through the azure-openai executable, running on SAP-managed Azure capacity.…