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Snowflake, OpenAI Partner to Embed AI Models in Enterprise Data Workflows

  • By John K. Waters
  • 02/10/26

Key Takeaways

  • Snowflake and OpenAI signed a multi-year, $200 million partnership to embed OpenAI models directly into Snowflake products, including Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence.
  • Customers will be able to build agents and applications grounded in governed enterprise data and use natural-language querying inside Snowflake to retrieve and analyze business data without writing code.
  • The integration extends model access into common enterprise workflows, including SQL. Snowflake Cortex AI Functions will let teams call OpenAI models from SQL across structured data, text, images, and audio.

Snowflake and OpenAI have announced a multi-year, $200 million partnership that will make OpenAI models available on Snowflake's platform. Under the agreement, OpenAI becomes a primary model capability in Snowflake, with models including GPT-5.2 accessible through Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, the company's natural-language interface aimed at enterprise users.

Executive View

Snowflake said the tie-up is designed to let customers build AI agents and applications grounded in governed enterprise data without leaving the Snowflake environment. "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.

OpenAI framed the partnership as a distribution play into the systems where companies already store and analyze data. "Snowflake is a trusted platform that sits at the center of how enterprises manage and activate their most critical data," said Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications, adding that the deal aims to make it easier for businesses to deploy agents and apps.

The companies said Snowflake users will be able to call OpenAI models through Cortex AI Functions directly from SQL, extending the same interface to structured tables as well as text, images, and audio.

Market Context

The announcement comes as data platforms and cloud providers compete to make AI model access less of a bespoke engineering project and more of a packaged capability, with the data layer and governance controls increasingly positioned as the differentiator. Analysts and industry watchers have pointed to intensifying rivalry among platforms seeking to be the default place for enterprises to build AI applications, including competition with Databricks and others.

Snowflake has been building out its model menu and agent tooling over the past year. The company previously announced that OpenAI's GPT-5 family of models was available natively on Snowflake Cortex AI, alongside other "frontier models," to keep model usage within a governed environment rather than requiring customers to ship data to external services.

It has also pursued parallel partnerships. In December, Snowflake and Anthropic announced a separate multi-year, $200 million expansion that brought Anthropic's Claude models into Snowflake and set up joint go-to-market work around agentic AI.

Collaboration Benefits

In the OpenAI deal, Snowflake and OpenAI said they will collaborate on new capabilities that use OpenAI's developer tooling, including an Apps SDK and AgentKit, aimed at supporting shared enterprise workflows. Snowflake said it will continue using ChatGPT Enterprise internally as part of the broader relationship.

The companies highlighted early customer interest in combining existing data platforms with newer AI interfaces. Canva, which has expanded its visual AI tools, said it was "excited to explore" how OpenAI models inside Snowflake Cortex AI could help it test ideas while maintaining security and performance, according to a statement from Helen Crossley, Canva's head of data science.

For Snowflake, the partnership is also a bet on lowering the barrier to agent-style applications for business users. Snowflake Intelligence is positioned as a way for employees to ask questions in natural language and have the system automatically retrieve and analyze data, reducing the need to write queries and build dashboards for routine questions.

For OpenAI, enterprise distribution has become an increasingly important pillar as businesses look for ways to apply models within existing security and compliance frameworks. OpenAI created the CEO of Applications role to focus on bringing products like ChatGPT and enterprise tools to market, with Simo joining to lead that effort.

Neither company disclosed how the $200 million figure breaks down over the life of the agreement. Snowflake and OpenAI said the goal is to help customers deploy agents that can reason over governed data and take action across enterprise tools, while preserving the data controls of the underlying platform.

About the Author

John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS.  He can be reached at [email protected].

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