Franz Faerber built the database that runs the world’s largest enterprises. As the original architect and head of development for SAP HANA, he spent years inside the engine room of global ERP. Now, with $140 million in venture capital, he is betting that engine is due for a rebuild [Bessemer Venture Partners].
His new company, Everest Systems, is targeting the SaaS business, a sector whose subscription-centric economics have long been a poor fit for the monolithic systems of the past. The wedge is a single workflow: automating the path from a sales opportunity in the CRM to revenue recognition in the finance ledger [Everest Systems blog].
The Live Sandbox Wedge
Everest’s flagship feature is called Live Sandbox. It is a generative AI environment that allows users to describe a business process in plain language and have the system tailor ERP features to match [Bessemer Venture Partners]. The promise is to let finance or operations teams simulate, review, and publish changes without the traditional file-passing friction between business and IT.
A Team Built on SAP’s Blueprints
The credibility of this bet rests heavily on the founding team’s pedigree. Faerber is joined by co-founders Joachim Fitzer, a former chief development architect for SAP’s cloud-native Business ByDesign suite, and Sandeep Chopra, a product leader and former entrepreneur-in-residence at lead investor Sutter Hill Ventures [Bessemer Venture Partners].
| Founder | Role at Everest | Prior Key Role |
|---|---|---|
| Franz Faerber | Co-Founder & CEO | EVP of Technology, SAP; SAP HANA architect |
| Joachim Fitzer | Co-Founder & CTO | Chief Development Architect, SAP Business ByDesign |
| Sandeep Chopra | Co-Founder & Co-CEO | Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Sutter Hill Ventures |
Investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and D1 Capital Partners. The $140 million total places Everest firmly in the venture-scale category, funding a dual-headquarters operation in the Bay Area and Germany [Bessemer Venture Partners].
The Unseen Traction
For a company with this much capital and pedigree, Everest operates with notable opacity. The public record shows no named customer logos, no disclosed deployment timelines, and a thin layer of press coverage outside of a single, detailed Bessemer Venture Partners article. While early engineering work, led by former leaders like Lars Dannecker, has prepared the platform for its first implementations, the market has yet to see a public case study [LinkedIn, Lars Dannecker].
What the Checkwriters Are Betting On
The investor syndicate is betting that the SaaS ERP category is ripe for an AI-native leader, and that this team has the unique architectural insight to build it. The next twelve months will be about converting that capital into concrete evidence. Can Everest move from a promising system to the proven system for a cohort of scaling SaaS businesses? With $140 million behind them, Faerber and his team have the fuel. The market is waiting to see the ignition.