What Snowflake’s deal with OpenAI tells us about the enterprise AI raceWhat Snowflake’s deal with OpenAI tells us about the enterprise AI race

Cloud data platform Snowflake signed a $200 million, multi-year artificial intelligence agreement with OpenAI on Monday, underscoring how competition in the enterprise AI space continues to accelerate.

As part of the agreement, Snowflake’s 12,600 customers will be able to access OpenAI’s models across all three major cloud providers. Snowflake employees are also being granted access to ChatGPT Enterprise. In addition, the two companies plan to collaborate on developing new AI agents and other AI-powered products.

“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,” Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said in a press release. “Customers can now harness all their enterprise knowledge in Snowflake together with the world-class intelligence of OpenAI models, enabling them to build AI agents that are powerful, responsible, and trustworthy. Together, we’re setting a new standard for AI innovation, helping businesses transform with confidence, while maintaining strong security and compliance standards.”

OpenAI declined to provide additional details about the partnership beyond what was shared in the announcement.

If the agreement sounds familiar, that’s because it closely mirrors a deal Snowflake announced earlier. At the beginning of December, Snowflake revealed a separate $200 million enterprise partnership with AI research firm Anthropic. At that time, Ramaswamy made similarly worded remarks about how the Anthropic partnership would enable customers to run powerful AI models directly on their existing enterprise data.

“Our partnership with OpenAI is a multi-year commercial commitment focused on reliability, performance, and real customer usage. At the same time, we remain intentionally model-agnostic. Enterprises need choice, and we do not believe in locking customers into a single provider,” Baris Gultekin, Snowflake’s vice president of AI, told TechCrunch via email. “OpenAI is an important partner, and it is one of several frontier model providers available on Snowflake today, alongside Anthropic, Google, Meta, and others.”

Snowflake is far from the only enterprise technology company pursuing large-scale agreements with multiple AI providers.

In January, workflow automation firm ServiceNow announced multi-year deals with both OpenAI and Anthropic, citing nearly identical motivations. At the time, ServiceNow president, COO, and CPO Amit Zavery told TechCrunch that partnering with more than one AI lab was a deliberate strategy, designed to give customers and employees flexibility to select the best model for a given task.

Determining which AI companies are gaining the most traction with enterprise customers remains challenging.

A late-2025 survey from Menlo Ventures indicated that Anthropic, a portfolio company, holds a significant lead in enterprise adoption. At the same time,e a report released last week by Andreessen Horowitz concluded that OpenAI is out in front. Unsurprisingly, each report highlights the success of the firm’s own portfolio company.

These competing analyses make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about overall enterprise AI usage patterns. Still, the growing list of high-profile partnerships offers a near-term picture of where enterprise AI adoption is heading. The takeaway is clear: enterprises are likely to continue working with multiple AI providers, since large language models vary in strengths, weaknesses, and optimal use cases.

Rather than betting on a single winner, many enterprises appear inclined to diversify their AI relationships. In practice, enterprise AI could resemble markets like ride-hailing, where users switch between services such as Lyft and Uber depending on which option best fits the moment. In fact, employees within these companies already tend to use their preferred AI tools regardless of formal corporate agreements.

It remains possible that one AI provider will ultimately emerge as the dominant force. For now, however, the trend suggests enterprises will continue signing deals with multiple players as they seek clear, measurable ways AI can deliver real business value.