Snowflake enters $200M 'co-innovation' deal with OpenAI
Snowflake Inc. announced on Monday that it has entered into a multi-year, $200-million partnership with OpenAI to pursue "co-innovation and joint go-to-market (GTM) strategies" focused on deploying AI agents across global enterprises.
The companies will also be working together to develop customized AI solutions for joint enterprise customers aimed at delivering "tangible return on investment." As part of the agreement, OpenAI models will be natively available to Snowflake's 12,600 global customers within its Snowflake Cortex AI platform across all three major clouds.
OpenAI models like GPT-5.2 will also be accessible within Snowflake Intelligence, the AI data cloud company's enterprise agent platform.
“By bringing OpenAI models to enterprise data, Snowflake enables organizations to build and deploy AI on top of their most valuable asset using the secure, governed platform they already trust,” Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said in a statement. “Customers can now harness all their enterprise knowledge in Snowflake together with the world-class intelligence of OpenAI models, enabling them to build AI agents that are powerful, responsible, and trustworthy.”
Snowflake said that having access to OpenAI models will allow its enterprise customers to build "richer, more engaging AI agents" that reason over governed data and take action across tools and apps.
“Snowflake is a trusted platform that sits at the center of how enterprises manage and activate their most critical data,” Fidji Simo, CEO of applications at OpenAI, said in a statement. “This partnership brings our advanced models directly into that environment, making it easier to deploy AI agents and apps, so businesses can close the gap between what AI is capable of and the value they can create today.”
The new collaboration is an expansion of a partnership between the two companies. OpenAI has been leveraging Snowflake as a data platform to experiment tracking, analytics and testing.
Snowflake could break software's 'doomsday narrative'
US software stocks have been getting crushed, dropping by double digits over the past year as investors become increasingly concerned about how AI might cut into their business by offering everything from apps and computer codes at cheaper prices.
However, in a client note last week, DA Davidson analysts, led by Gil Luria, reiterated their Buy rating for Snowflake and maintained a $300 price target, with Luria stating that the company is "one of the few names that could break doomsday narrative" for the sector.
"We have no desire to fight the holy war quite yet, but we do think some Software is worth buying," Luria said. "While the Software complex may continue to be under pressure during the rest of guidance season, we do want to selectively buy companies that will be able to break the doomsday narrative more easily."
Although Snowflake's stock is down 13.1% to start the year, it has risen 5.1% over the past 12 months, avoiding the double-digit losses that have hit many software companies during that period.
The agreement with OpenAI is the second partnership with a major tech company that Snowflake has entered into over the past several months. In October, the company announced a partnership with Palantir to provide customers with enhanced enterprise-ready AI and analytics solutions.
As part of the collaboration, Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud platform will be integrated with the Palantir Foundry and Palantir Artificial Intelligence Intelligence Platform (AIP) to deliver data analytics, data pipelines and AI applications for users in the commercial and public sectors.