Snowflake and OpenAI Unveil $200M AI Partnership

Snowflake and OpenAI have revealed a $200 million partnership that brings AI capabilities directly into a data platform.

By embedding OpenAI’s models inside Snowflake’s data infrastructure, organizations can now run AI on proprietary information without the traditional risks of exposure or compliance violations.

Snowflake says the agreement also makes OpenAI models natively available to Snowflake’s 12,600 global customers within Snowflake Cortex AI across all three major clouds.

It follows on from last month, when Anthropic secured a multi-year agentic AI deal worth $200 million with Snowflake.

The partnership

The collaboration goes deeper than basic API connections.

That $200 million price tag reveals the scale of ambition driving this venture. Both companies are pouring serious resources into building genuine technical bridges between OpenAI’s AI capabilities and Snowflake’s data management backbone. This arguably represents a long-term bet on what enterprise AI deployment needs to look like when security and compliance matter as much as performance.

Financial services and healthcare organizations face the most immediate transformation. These heavily regulated industries have watched AI from the sidelines, handcuffed by strict data protection requirements and compliance mandates. The partnership’s design lets them apply AI models to their most sensitive information, while keeping complete control over where data resides and who can access it.

The details

Models including GPT-5.2 will be accessible within Snowflake Intelligence, the company’s natural-language enterprise intelligence agent. Snowflake said this allows employees across an organization to query and act on structured and unstructured data using plain language, while maintaining existing security, compliance, and governance controls.

A central theme of the partnership is the acceleration of so-called agentic AI, systems that can reason over data, take actions across tools, and support complex workflows with minimal human intervention. Snowflake and OpenAI plan to co-develop features using OpenAI’s Apps SDK, AgentKit, and APIs, tailored for enterprise use cases.

According to the companies, these AI agents will run directly on governed enterprise data within Snowflake, allowing organizations to automate analysis, decision support, and operational tasks without compromising reliability.

Customer implications and early use cases

Several customers are already preparing to use the deeper integration, including design platform Canva and wearable technology company WHOOP. Both companies emphasized the importance of combining advanced AI models with secure, scalable data infrastructure.

These examples point to a broader implication of the partnership: enterprises are increasingly looking to operationalize AI across departments, not just within data science teams, while maintaining centralized oversight.

Governance, multimodal AI, and responsible deployment

Beyond text-based analysis, Snowflake said the partnership will support multimodal AI capabilities. Through Snowflake Cortex AI Functions, enterprises can use OpenAI models to analyze images, audio, and text alongside traditional tabular data, all using SQL. This approach is intended to lower barriers for data teams by relying on familiar tools.

The companies also emphasized responsible AI practices. Snowflake’s Horizon Catalog provides governance controls designed to help organizations manage how AI models interact with sensitive data, addressing regulatory and ethical concerns that have slowed adoption in regulated industries.

Building on an existing relationship

The partnership builds on existing ties between the companies. OpenAI already uses Snowflake internally for experiment tracking, analytics, and testing, while Snowflake uses ChatGPT Enterprise to support employee productivity and decision-making.

If successful, the partnership could serve as a model for how AI model providers and data infrastructure companies collaborate to move AI from hype to operational reality across large organizations.

We tested Gemini 3 and ChatGPT 5.2 with real prompts for writing, planning, explanations, and creativity. Here’s which AI is best for daily use.

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