Snowflake Announces Snowflake for Startups to Help Companies Build, Launch and Scale Enterprise-Grade AI Innovations

Snowflake doubles down on commitment to startups with new capabilities and resources to empower builders to create trusted, enterprise-grade AI applications on the AI Data Cloud

“Snowflake for Startups represents our unified commitment to empowering the next generation of builders,” said Stefan Williams, VP, Corporate Development at Snowflake. “This initiative brings together Snowflake’s most impactful programs and resources—from technology and capital to community—into one cohesive experience, providing the launchpad for innovators to build, scale and get to market faster."

Accelerate Your Startup with Managed AI

For many startups, the challenge of building and securing AI infrastructure diverts critical resources and slows down product development. Snowflake is providing self-service access to the same enterprise-grade AI infrastructure built by Cortex AI that powers products like Snowflake Intelligence to make it easier for startups to build and scale their AI applications and agents. Startups receive dedicated access to inference capacity within Snowflake’s security perimeter, with the freedom to choose from a variety of leading frontier models. This allows them to build AI-powered agents and applications and distribute them across the Snowflake ecosystem to reach thousands of customers and accelerate growth, securely and rapidly.

"The magic of building on Snowflake is everything we didn't have to do. We didn't have to build a separate AI platform or worry about core security and governance from scratch,” said Assaf Henkin, Co-Founder and CEO at Jedify. “Snowflake handles all the complex infrastructure, so we can focus entirely on delivering the contextual data layers, powered by our Semantic Fusion™ technology, enabling powerful, enterprise-grade AI applications. It's the fastest path from an idea to a trusted product."

Fueling Venture-Backed Innovation

To accelerate the growth of venture-backed startups, Snowflake is evolving how it works with VCs and investment firms, which includes Altimeter, Amplify, Blackstone, Capital One Ventures, Coatue, Greylock Partners, ICONIQ, IVP, Madrona Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and more, plus its first strategic VC relationship in the Asia Pacific-Japan region with the Asan Nanum Foundation. This collaboration provides firms with early insight into cutting-edge AI startups building on Snowflake. They also gain free Snowflake usage for their portfolio companies, combined with opportunities to work with Snowflake's industry and technical experts. This helps remove a key barrier to building on an enterprise-grade platform so startups can compete with incumbents without massive upfront investment.

"Snowflake sits at the epicenter of the AI and data revolution, giving them an unparalleled vantage point to spot emerging trends,” said Pauline Yang, Partner at Altimeter. “By working with Snowflake, we’re equipping our founders with the knowledge and tools to build secure, AI-native applications that solve customer problems from day one.”

Grow with Snowflake

Snowflake for Startups provides a comprehensive toolkit designed to help new companies build, launch and grow through its:

• Go-To-Market Engine: Startups get access to more than 12,000 potential customers through the Snowflake Marketplace to accelerate growth and unlock new monetization opportunities for their applications and products.
• Snowflake Startup Accelerator: By providing builders with access to credits, engineering support and unparalleled go-to-market guidance, the Snowflake Startup Accelerator has helped participants launch 28 live products.The program’s growing success is underscored by a 304% increase in program applications this year.
• Snowflake Ventures: Snowflake Ventures is on track to accelerate its investment pace by over 30% this year, a move that is actively fueling the next generation of startups and will grow its total number of portfolio companies and exits to over 65. This includes over 15 early stage companies Snowflake Ventures has invested in through the company’s startup programs.
• Innovation and Event Spaces at SVAI Hub: With its prime location in Menlo Park, the SVAI Hub will provide dedicated coworking and event spaces for startups to deepen their relationship with Snowflake while being in close proximity to key VC firms and leading AI companies. The SVAI Hub’s coworking space expects to launch next month with a first cohort of over a dozen startups.

“Snowflake for Startups has supported us at every stage, including through investment from Snowflake Ventures,” said Alexis Steinman, Co-CEO at Maxa, winner of a Snowflake Startup Challenge and more recently a Data Drivers Award. “Snowflake was the best platform to build our patent-pending reasoning and verification technology that extends the reach of generative AI to mainstream finance and business teams that struggle with complex systems of record. Snowflake's partnership lets us focus on our 'secret sauce' while delivering immediate enterprise-grade trust, scalability and frontier capabilities."

Source: Snowflake media announcement