Snowflake and OpenAI Seal $200M Partnership for Native Enterprise AI

Snowflake and OpenAI announced a multi-year, $200 million partnership on February 2, 2026, to make OpenAI's models natively available on Snowflake's data platform. The deal lets Snowflake's 12,600 global customers build and run AI agents that reason over enterprise data without moving it outside Snowflake's security and governance perimeter. OpenAI models, including GPT-5.2, are integrated into Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, with natural language interfaces so business users can deploy AI workflows without coding. Canva and WHOOP are among the early customers already using the integration in production.

Background

Enterprises want to use frontier AI on their own data but have been constrained by compliance and security: sending sensitive data to third-party AI services can violate policy or regulation. Snowflake's model has been to keep data in its platform and bring compute and analytics to the data. Embedding OpenAI models inside Snowflake extends that idea to generative AI, so customers can run agents and prompts against governed data without exporting it. The $200 million commitment over multiple years signals that both companies see in-platform, enterprise-ready AI as a major growth driver.

Competitors such as Databricks have been strengthening their own AI and model offerings, so the Snowflake–OpenAI deal is also a competitive move to lock in enterprise AI workloads on the Snowflake platform.

Key Details

Under the partnership, OpenAI's advanced models become a native capability within Snowflake. Customers can build AI agents that query and reason over data in Snowflake using Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, with access controlled by Snowflake's existing security and governance. Business users can drive these workflows through natural language instead of writing code, which speeds deployment and reduces dependency on data science teams for routine use cases.

Canva is using the integration to accelerate research and analytics. WHOOP, the fitness wearable company, is using it to speed up internal decision-making. These are live production deployments, not pilots, and they were announced within weeks of the partnership, suggesting the technical integration was well advanced before the formal announcement.

Snowflake's stock reacted positively to the news, with investors viewing the agreement as strengthening Snowflake's position in an increasingly AI-centric enterprise market. The deal also reinforces the trend of data platform vendors offering native access to frontier models rather than leaving AI as a separate, bolt-on layer.

Impact

For enterprise CIOs and data leaders, the message is that 2026 data and AI budgets should assume native model access on the same platform where data is stored. The Snowflake–OpenAI deal is a reference implementation: one contract, one platform, with governance and compliance handled where the data already lives. That can reduce legal and security review cycles and accelerate AI adoption in regulated industries.

For the data and AI vendor landscape, the partnership raises the bar. Rivals will need comparable in-platform model options and clear stories about security and governance. The $200 million size indicates that Snowflake and OpenAI are betting on significant revenue from joint enterprise adoption over the life of the deal.

What's Next

Expect more customer announcements and use cases from Snowflake and OpenAI, and continued expansion of model and tooling options inside Snowflake. Competitors will respond with their own native AI and model partnerships. Regulators and procurement teams will scrutinize how in-platform AI handles data retention, model training, and compliance, which could shape how widely the pattern is adopted across industries.