Cloud data platform Snowflake has entered a multi-year partnership worth $200 million with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, as enterprises accelerate efforts to deploy artificial intelligence at scale without compromising security, governance, or compliance.
Under the agreement, OpenAI’s frontier models, including GPT-5.2, will be made natively available inside Snowflake’s enterprise environment through Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence. The integration allows more than 12,000 Snowflake customers to build AI-powered applications and agents directly on top of their proprietary data.
Bringing AI Closer to Enterprise Data
The partnership is designed to remove one of the biggest barriers to enterprise AI adoption: keeping sensitive data secure while enabling advanced intelligence.
With the integration, employees across business functions will be able to query both structured and unstructured data using natural language. Snowflake Intelligence can automatically retrieve, analyse, and act on data without requiring users to write code, making AI more accessible beyond technical teams.
Snowflake said the integration brings advanced reasoning, analysis, and multimodal capabilities into enterprise workflows, covering traditional datasets such as rows and columns as well as text, images, and audio.
Through Cortex AI Functions, data teams can call OpenAI models directly from SQL, effectively embedding AI into the tools they already use.
Focus on Security, Governance, and Compliance
Executives from both companies stressed that governance sits at the core of the partnership.
“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 collaboration allows customers to combine their internal knowledge with OpenAI’s models to build AI agents that are powerful, responsible, and trustworthy, while maintaining strict compliance standards.
Governance controls are managed through Snowflake’s Horizon Catalog, which allows enterprises to define how data and models can be accessed and used. This is particularly important for regulated sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, alongside industries like retail, media, and manufacturing.
OpenAI Deepens Enterprise Footprint
Fidji Simo, chief executive officer of Applications at OpenAI, said Snowflake plays a central role in how enterprises manage and activate data.
“This partnership brings our advanced models directly into that environment, making it easier to deploy AI agents and applications so businesses can close the gap between what AI is capable of and the value they can create today,” she said.
The deal further expands OpenAI’s enterprise reach, which already includes companies such as Accenture, Walmart, PayPal, Intuit, Target, Thermo Fisher, BNY, Morgan Stanley, and BBVA. OpenAI said more than one million business customers globally now use its services.
Early Enterprise Adoption
Several companies have already begun using the combined capabilities.
Design platform Canva said the Snowflake and OpenAI integration has helped it scale visual AI features while maintaining performance and security. Wearable technology company WHOOP said Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Agents have enabled it to analyse data and make decisions within a secure, governed framework, with OpenAI’s models strengthening reasoning and analysis as the business grows.
What Comes Next
Teams from Snowflake and OpenAI plan to introduce additional features built on OpenAI’s Apps SDK, AgentKit, and APIs to support shared enterprise workflows. Snowflake will also continue to use 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 announcement comes amid a wave of large enterprise deals in AI infrastructure. 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 also announced a multi-year partnership with Cerebras to strengthen its computing infrastructure.
Together, these moves signal an intensifying race to make advanced AI a native, trusted layer inside enterprise data platforms.
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