Snowflake Expands Microsoft, OpenAI Partnership: Will Include Other Prominent Models Like Anthropic's Claude, Meta's Llama, And DeepSeek

Snowflake Inc. SNOW unveiled its deeper partnership with Microsoft Corp. MSFT during its earnings call after reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. The data cloud company introduced its new artificial intelligence agent Cortex for enhanced productivity and data access.

What Happened: The company announced that it has expanded its partnership with Microsoft, which brings OpenAI’s models into Cortex.

Cortex Agents are a new class of AI agents from Snowflake that can perform a variety of business tasks using structured and unstructured data. Cortex is also powered by other large language models.

“We are supporting a range of market-leading models, including Anthropic’s Claude, Meta Llama, and DeepSeek,” said CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy.

The CEO also added, “We are making Cortex Agents available in Microsoft 365 CoPilot and Microsoft Teams, bringing millions of users, seamless access to information, and accelerated productivity, all within the Microsoft platform.”

During the earnings call, Ramaswamy highlighted how AstraZeneca PLC AZN is using Snowflake’s AI and machine learning technology to, accelerate drug discovery and development, aiming for 20 new medicines by 2030.

He also explained that State Street Corp. STT leverages Snowflake AI to uncover market insights for better investment decisions.

Why It Matters: Snowflake beat analyst expectations in its latest quarterly results. Earnings per share came in at 30 cents, significantly exceeding the 17 cents per share predicted by analysts. Revenue also soared to $986.77 million, surpassing the anticipated $955.93 million and marking a substantial jump from $774.7 million in the same period last year.

Despite the strong performance, Snowflake’s future projections fell short of analyst expectations. The company anticipates first-quarter revenue between $955 million and $960 million, lower than the $1 billion estimate. For fiscal 2026, Snowflake projects revenue of $4.28 billion, missing the $4.41 billion estimate.

Price Action: SNOW rose 1.21% on Wednesday and jumped 9.06% in after-hours, this outpaced the 0.05% rise in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, which tracks the S&P 500 index.

The stock remains 5.51% higher on a year-to-date basis and down 28.99% over a year.

Benzinga tracks 38 analysts with an average price target of $193.42 for the stock, reflecting a “buy” rating. Estimates range widely from $121 to $235. Recent ratings from Rosenblatt, Citigroup, and Canaccord Genuity average $218.33, suggesting a potential 20.46% upside.