Snowflake's ongoing pitch: bring AI to data rather than data to AI

Summary

Snowflake is putting cash and kinetic energy behind the idea that AI works best in its platform. Whether it's the $200 million deal signed with OpenAI, its impdending acquisition of Observe, or its new Project SnowWork, Snowflake partner Gary McConnell said that the platform is constantly coming up in conversations, because of this effort. “What's compelling about Snowflake's recent moves isn't just the dollar amounts — it's the consistency,” he told The Register. “Snowflake has been aggressive on the feature roadmap. They're also making investments in observability which should play to enterprise support as complexity scales.” McConnell, who's the CEO of solution provider VirtuIT, said Snowflake’s recent moves have put a focus on helping customers achieve an actual return on investment for AI, an important topic among his enterprise customers. “The OpenAI partnership, the Observe acquisition intent, and Project SnowWork all point to the same thesis: your data platform should be the place where AI work actually happens, not just a source you export from,” he told The Register. “For our customers, that's a meaningful shift. Historically, organizations had to stitch together a data warehouse, a feature store, and a separate AI/ML environment. Snowflake is collapsing that stack, and we're seeing real interest in that consolidation story.” Snowflake has been aggressive with its feature roadmap and making investments in observability a critical component as the complexity of AI data scales, McConnell said. “Customers are excited about being able to bring AI workloads to the data rather than moving the data to the AI,” he said. “The governance story of knowing where your data is and who touched it also resonates strongly in regulated industries such as pharma, legal, and finance to name a few.” Snowflake is adding thousands of customers annually, growing from 7,800 in January 2023 to 13,330 this January, a 70 percent increase in its customer base in three years. In that s...