Snowflake bets $200M that OpenAI makes databases more chatty

Steven

Snowflake bets $200M that OpenAI makes databases more chatty

Summary

Snowflake has committed up to $200 million over a multi‑year agreement to purchase access to OpenAI’s frontier models and ChatGPT Enterprise. The deal brings OpenAI models (including ChatGPT 5.2) directly into Snowflake’s Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, replacing previous Azure‑mediated access. Snowflake and OpenAI engineering teams will co‑innovate using OpenAI Apps SDKs, AgentKit and APIs to deliver natural‑language querying, data‑native code generation and governed answers grounded in enterprise data.

Key Points

  • Snowflake commits up to $200M to buy access to OpenAI’s frontier models and ChatGPT Enterprise under a multi‑year contract.
  • The integration is first‑party (direct with OpenAI) rather than mediated through a cloud provider such as Azure, enabling tighter technical and go‑to‑market alignment.
  • OpenAI functionality will be embedded in Cortex AI (including Cortex Code) and Snowflake Intelligence to allow natural‑language queries and data exploration across rows, columns, text, images and audio.
  • Cortex Code is a data‑native coding agent that produces inspectable, executable outputs (SQL, Python, data pipelines, ML workflows, agent logic) that respect governance, metadata and compute.
  • Snowflake Intelligence is aimed at non‑technical users, delivering answers grounded in governed enterprise data, RBAC and semantic models rather than producing speculative responses.

Context and relevance

This move highlights a broader industry trend of embedding large language models directly into data platforms, turning databases into conversational interfaces. For enterprises, a first‑party integration promises more predictable performance, clearer roadmaps and improved governance compared with third‑party cloud mediation. The deal also signals how commercialisation of retrieval‑augmented workflows and agentic capabilities is moving closer to the data plane, with implications for vendor choice and architecture.

Why should I read this?

Because if you deal with data, this changes how people will get answers out of databases. Snowflake is betting big that chatty AI on top of your tables will make analytics far easier — and it wants to control the plumbing. Short version: fewer hoops to jump through for natural‑language queries, but also new vendor lock‑in and governance questions. Worth knowing now if you plan data strategy or tool procurement.

Author style

Punchy: this is a significant commercial bet, not a token integration. If you’re responsible for data strategy, security or AI adoption, read the detail — it will influence vendor decisions and how conversational data tooling gets built and governed.

Source

Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/02/02/snowflake_200m_openai/