Snowflake Launches Snowflake for Startups to Empower AI Innovation with Enterprise-Grade Tools, VC Partnerships, and Cloud Infrastructure

Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company, has launched Snowflake for Startups, a new initiative designed to help early-stage companies build, launch, and scale enterprise-grade AI innovations. Unveiled at the opening of Snowflake’s Silicon Valley AI (SVAI) Hub, the program builds on the existing Powered by Snowflake initiative by integrating technology, capital, community, and strategic partnerships into a single, cohesive ecosystem for founders. Stefan Williams, VP of Corporate Development at Snowflake, said the program reflects the company’s commitment to empowering the next generation of innovators. “Snowflake for Startups brings together our most impactful resources—from advanced AI infrastructure and venture capital connections to coworking spaces and technical support—into one unified launchpad that helps startups move faster from idea to market.” A key component of the program is managed AI access, which gives startups self-service access to the same enterprise-grade AI infrastructure used by Snowflake’s Cortex AI. This includes secure inference capacity within Snowflake’s trusted environment and the ability to choose from leading frontier AI models. Founders can build AI-powered agents and applications and deploy them across the Snowflake ecosystem, reaching thousands of enterprise customers with speed and security. Assaf Henkin, Co-Founder and CEO of Jedify, highlighted the advantage of using Snowflake. “The magic of building on Snowflake is everything we didn’t have to do. We didn’t need to build a separate AI platform or handle security and governance from scratch. Snowflake manages the complex infrastructure, so we can focus on our core innovation—delivering contextual data layers with our Semantic Fusion™ technology to create trusted, enterprise-grade AI applications. It’s the fastest path from idea to product.” To support venture-backed startups, Snowflake is deepening its collaboration with leading venture capital firms including Altimeter, Amplify, Blackstone, Capital One Ventures, Coatue, Greylock Partners, ICONIQ, IVP, Madrona Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and its first strategic partner in the Asia Pacific-Japan region, the Asan Nanum Foundation. These firms gain early access to promising AI startups building on Snowflake and receive free Snowflake usage for their portfolio companies, along with direct access to Snowflake’s technical and industry experts. This reduces the barrier to entry for startups aiming to compete with larger enterprises without massive upfront costs. Pauline Yang, Partner at Altimeter, said, “Snowflake sits at the epicenter of the AI and data revolution, giving us a unique vantage point to identify emerging trends. By partnering with Snowflake, we’re equipping our founders with the tools and knowledge to build secure, AI-native applications from day one.” Snowflake for Startups also offers a full suite of resources to help startups grow, including access to the SVAI Hub’s coworking spaces, mentorship, and participation in events and challenges. Alexis Steinman, Co-CEO of Maxa—winner of a Snowflake Startup Challenge and Data Drivers Award—said, “Snowflake has supported us at every stage, including investment from Snowflake Ventures. The platform was essential in building our patent-pending reasoning and verification technology, which extends generative AI to mainstream business users. Snowflake lets us focus on our core innovation while delivering enterprise-grade trust, scalability, and access to frontier AI capabilities.” Snowflake continues to strengthen its role as a foundational platform for the AI era, with over 12,000 global customers, including many of the world’s largest enterprises, leveraging its AI Data Cloud to build, use, and share data, apps, and AI. Learn more at snowflake.com (NYSE: SNOW).