Snowflake signs $200 million deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI

ChatGPT maker OpenAI and cloud data platform Snowflake have entered a multi-year partnership valued at $200 million to integrate advanced artificial intelligence models directly into Snowflake’s enterprise data environment, as companies look to deploy AI at scale without compromising security, governance, or compliance.

Under the agreement, OpenAI’s frontier models, including GPT-5.2, will be natively available within Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence. This allows Snowflake’s more than 12,000 enterprise customers to build custom applications and AI agents that are grounded in their own proprietary data. Employees across business functions can also query structured and unstructured data using natural language, with Snowflake Intelligence automatically retrieving, analysing, and acting on data without requiring users to write code.

Snowflake said the integration is designed to bring advanced reasoning, analysis, and multimodal capabilities directly to enterprise data, covering rows and columns as well as text, images, and audio. Through Cortex AI Functions, teams can call OpenAI models directly from SQL, enabling AI to become a native extension of tools already used by data and analytics teams.

“By bringing OpenAI models to enterprise data, Snowflake enables organisations to build and deploy AI on top of their most valuable asset using the secure, governed platform they already trust,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, chief executive officer of Snowflake. He added that the partnership would allow customers to combine their enterprise knowledge with OpenAI’s models to build AI agents that are “powerful, responsible, and trustworthy”, while maintaining strong security and compliance standards.

Fidji Simo, chief executive officer of Applications at OpenAI, said Snowflake sits at the centre of how enterprises manage and activate critical data. “This partnership brings our advanced models directly into that environment, making it easier to deploy AI agents and apps, so businesses can close the gap between what AI is capable of and the value they can create today,” she said.

Governance and compliance form a central pillar of the collaboration. By using Snowflake’s Horizon Catalog, enterprises can apply strict controls over data access, model usage, and regulatory requirements while deploying large language models. This is particularly relevant for organisations in regulated sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, which Snowflake serves alongside industries including retail, media, and manufacturing.

Several enterprises have already begun using the combined capabilities. Canva said the partnership between OpenAI and Snowflake has been instrumental in scaling its visual AI offerings while maintaining performance and security. WHOOP said Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Agents have helped it analyse data and make decisions in a secure and governed manner, with OpenAI’s models further enhancing reasoning and analysis as the company scales.

Looking ahead, teams from both companies will work together to introduce new features built on OpenAI’s Apps SDK, AgentKit, and APIs to support shared enterprise workflows. Snowflake will also continue using ChatGPT Enterprise internally to speed up decision-making, streamline workflows, and improve collaboration. OpenAI, in turn, uses Snowflake for internal experiment tracking and analytics.

The partnership expands OpenAI’s growing footprint among large global enterprises, which already include Accenture, Walmart, PayPal, Intuit, Target, Thermo Fisher, BNY, Morgan Stanley, and BBVA. OpenAI said more than one million business customers worldwide now use its services.

The announcement follows a series of large enterprise deals in the AI infrastructure space. In December, Snowflake signed a separate multi-year, $200 million agreement with Anthropic to bring Claude models to its AI Data Cloud. Last month, OpenAI announced a multi-year partnership with Cerebras to strengthen its computing infrastructure.