London / Porto, 22 January 2026 – Sage (FTSE: SGE), the leader in accounting, financial, HR, and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses, today announced a global partnership with Augusta Labs, the applied AI lab that helps enterprises build and scale AI transformation. The partnership accelerates the development and delivery of Sage’s AI Centre of Excellence by embedding Augusta Labs’ applied AI engineering teams directly into Sage’s product organisation. This expands Sage’s AI and data engineering capacity and strengthens its shift toward becoming an AI first company.
Businesses now expect more from the software they rely on, including faster insights, smarter automation, and experiences that feel effortless. Delivering that level of performance depends on how quickly AI can be designed, engineered, and deployed into real workflows. McKinsey’s latest The State of AI report notes that companies capturing the most value from AI are those able to move from experimentation to production at speed and scale intelligence across their products.
To meet this rising expectation and push its own high-performance goals, Sage is growing its applied AI engineering capacity through its new partnership with Augusta Labs. With Augusta Labs’ multidisciplinary teams working directly inside Sage’s product organisation, Sage can build and deploy production ready intelligence faster, deepen automation across its solutions, and bring the benefits of AI to customers at a pace that matches how businesses operate today.
“This partnership gives Sage the start-up speed we need while strengthening our internal AI and data engineering capabilities,” said Manav Thiara, SVP, Technical Fellow, Data Digital Services and Engineering, Sage. “With Augusta Labs fully embedded into our product organisation, everything we build together aligns with the Sage Platform, our AI roadmap, and the needs of our customers. This approach accelerates delivery for our AI Centre of Excellence and supports our transformation into an AI-first company.”
Scaling applied AI across Sage’s global product ecosystem
Through this partnership, Augusta Labs’ multidisciplinary teams are working directly on key global workstreams including Sage Payroll, Sage Active, and Sage 300. Operating as an extension of Sage’s internal engineering organisation, these teams help deliver:
By working in Portugal’s thriving start-up ecosystem, these teams bring a level of agility and high-velocity engineering that strengthens Sage’s global AI delivery model. This helps Sage develop and deploy agentic and applied-AI capabilities at a pace rarely matched in the industry, while maintaining the reliability and governance expected by millions of customers. The result is faster iteration, quicker movement from prototype to production, and real value delivered to businesses far sooner than traditional development models allow.
“AI is entering its execution era, and Sage is one of the few companies positioned to realise its full value at scale, thanks to the depth of its data and the reach of its global distribution,” said Rodrigo Fernandes, Co-Founder, Augusta Labs. “By combining Sage’s platform vision and unique data assets with our applied AI expertise, we are helping create a new generation of intelligent, adaptive software for businesses everywhere. It’s an exciting step for both organisations and for the future of work.”
This integrated execution model ensures AI is built consistently across Sage’s portfolio, aligned with the Sage Platform, and embedded where customers work every day. It brings start-up-level velocity to Sage’s product delivery, whilst maintaining the scale, reliability and governance expected by customers and partners.
To explore Sage’s latest AI capabilities, visit Sage Ai.
About Sage
Sage exists to knock down barriers so everyone can thrive, starting with the millions of small and mid-sized businesses served by us, our partners and accountants. Customers trust our finance, HR and payroll software to make work and money flow. By digitalising business processes and relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, banks and governments, our AI-powered platform connects SMBs, removing friction and delivering insights. Knocking down barriers also means we use our time, technology and experience to tackle digital inequality, economic inequality and the climate crisis.
About Augusta Labs
Augusta Labs, founded in January 2024, is an applied AI lab that helps enterprises accelerate and scale their AI transformation. The company partners with leading organisations – from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies – to design, develop and deploy production ready AI solutions that deliver measurable value in weeks, not years. Operating from Lisbon and serving clients globally, Augusta Labs combines deep technical expertise with a high velocity delivery model that brings AI out of experimentation and into real operations at scale. Learn more at augustalabs.ai.