On Monday, Snowflake, a prominent cloud data company, secured a multi-year AI collaboration with OpenAI valued at $200 million, further intensifying the competitive landscape for enterprise AI solutions.
This partnership grants Snowflake’s 12,600 customers access to OpenAI models across all major cloud service providers, while Snowflake personnel can utilize OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise. Additionally, both companies are collaborating on the development of new AI agents and various AI products.
“By integrating OpenAI models with enterprise data, Snowflake empowers organizations to construct and implement AI solutions based on their most important asset through a secure and governed platform they trust,” stated Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy in a press release. “Customers can leverage their enterprise knowledge within Snowflake, combined with OpenAI’s exceptional intelligence, to create AI agents that are robust, responsible, and reliable. Together, we are establishing a new benchmark for AI innovation, enabling businesses to transform with assurance while upholding rigorous security and compliance standards.”
OpenAI has refrained from providing any additional details regarding the deal apart from the initial press release.
The essence of this deal may seem familiar; earlier in December, Snowflake announced a comparable $200 million agreement with AI research lab Anthropic. During that announcement, Ramaswamy expressed similar sentiments regarding how the partnership would afford customers access to powerful AI models, enhancing their existing data capabilities.
“Our collaboration with OpenAI represents a multi-year commercial commitment aimed at ensuring reliability, performance, and genuine customer utilization. Furthermore, we remain intentionally model-agnostic, as enterprises require choices, and we believe in avoiding locking customers into a single provider,” stated Baris Gultekin, Snowflake’s Vice President of AI, in an email to TechCrunch. “OpenAI is a crucial partner, but it is just one of several leading model providers available on Snowflake today, alongside Anthropic, Google, Meta, and others.”
Snowflake is not alone in forming significant agreements with multiple AI firms.
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In January, workflow automation firm ServiceNow also announced multi-year agreements with both OpenAI and Anthropic, mirroring Snowflake’s rationale. Amit Zavery, the President, COO, and CPO of ServiceNow, remarked to TechCrunch at that time that their engagement with both AI labs was intentional, aiming to provide customers and employees the flexibility to select models according to specific tasks.
Determining which AI companies are achieving notable success in enterprise adoption thus far remains challenging.
A Menlo Ventures survey from late 2025 indicates that their portfolio company Anthropic holds a significant market advantage, while a recent report from Andreessen Horowitz suggests that OpenAI leads the field.
These contradictory surveys complicate the accurate tracking of enterprise AI usage trends. Nevertheless, the recent flurry of agreements offers a glimpse into short-term enterprise AI adoption patterns. Ultimately, enterprises are likely to continue forming partnerships with multiple AI providers, as each offers large language models with distinct strengths and weaknesses.
Consequently, enterprises may opt to collaborate with various AI entities, as different companies and their large language models possess unique advantages and limitations.
Enterprise AI may evolve into a market featuring several successful players with overlapping customer bases, similar to how ride-share users alternate between Lyft and Uber based on situational needs. Notably, employees at these enterprises already utilize their preferred models regardless of corporate agreements.
Alternatively, it is possible that a definitive leader will emerge in due time. For now, however, it appears that enterprises will continue to negotiate agreements with multiple AI providers as they seek to uncover the tangible value AI can deliver.
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