Snowflake’s Strategic AI Partnerships: A New Era in Enterprise Data Management
In a significant move underscoring the intensifying competition in the enterprise AI sector, cloud data company Snowflake has entered into a $200 million multi-year agreement with OpenAI. This partnership aims to integrate OpenAI’s advanced AI models into Snowflake’s platform, providing its 12,600 customers with enhanced capabilities across all major cloud providers. Additionally, Snowflake’s employees will gain access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, facilitating internal operations and innovation. The collaboration also focuses on developing new AI agents and products, further enriching Snowflake’s offerings.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, emphasized the transformative potential of this alliance, stating that by integrating OpenAI models with enterprise data, organizations can build and deploy AI solutions atop their most valuable assets within a secure and governed platform. This integration enables customers to leverage their enterprise knowledge in conjunction with OpenAI’s intelligence, fostering the creation of powerful, responsible, and trustworthy AI agents. Ramaswamy highlighted that this partnership sets a new standard for AI innovation, empowering businesses to transform confidently while maintaining stringent security and compliance standards.
This collaboration mirrors a similar $200 million deal Snowflake announced in December with AI research lab Anthropic. At that time, Ramaswamy expressed that the partnership with Anthropic would provide customers access to robust AI models built upon their existing data. These consecutive agreements underscore Snowflake’s commitment to offering diverse AI solutions to its clientele.
Baris Gultekin, Vice President of AI at Snowflake, elaborated on the company’s strategic approach, noting that the partnership with OpenAI is a multi-year commercial commitment focused on reliability, performance, and real customer usage. He emphasized Snowflake’s intentional model-agnostic stance, asserting that enterprises require choice and should not be confined to a single provider. Gultekin highlighted that OpenAI is a crucial partner among several frontier model providers available on Snowflake’s platform, including Anthropic, Google, Meta, and others.
Snowflake’s strategy reflects a broader trend among enterprises to collaborate with multiple AI companies. In January, workflow automation platform ServiceNow announced multi-year agreements with both OpenAI and Anthropic. Amit Zavery, ServiceNow’s President, COO, and CPO, explained that partnering with both AI labs was a deliberate decision to offer customers and employees the flexibility to choose the most suitable model for specific tasks.
Determining which AI companies are achieving the most success in enterprise adoption remains challenging. A Menlo Ventures survey from late 2025 indicates that its portfolio company, Anthropic, holds a commanding market lead. Conversely, an Andreessen Horowitz report suggests that its portfolio company, OpenAI, is leading the sector. These conflicting reports make it difficult to accurately track enterprise AI usage trends.
However, the recent series of partnerships provides insight into the current landscape of enterprise AI adoption. Enterprises are likely to continue forming alliances with multiple AI providers, recognizing that each offers large language models with distinct strengths and weaknesses. This approach allows organizations to select the most appropriate AI solutions tailored to their specific needs.
The enterprise AI market may evolve into a domain with several successful players sharing an overlapping customer base, similar to how consumers alternate between ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber based on immediate requirements. Employees within these enterprises already utilize their preferred models, regardless of existing company contracts.
Alternatively, a dominant player may eventually emerge. For now, it appears that enterprises will continue to engage with multiple AI providers as they explore avenues where AI can deliver tangible value.
