Snowflake Talks With Anthropic About AI Partnership
The Takeaway
• Snowflake talked with Anthropic about LLM deal
• Offering Anthropic could help Snowflake raise profile with AI developers
• Snowflake has been under pressure over AI strategy
Database provider Snowflake is talking with OpenAI rival Anthropic about letting Snowflake’s customers use Anthropic’s large language models to build artificial intelligence–powered applications, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The Anthropic agreement, if consummated, could help CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy address investors’ concerns about Snowflake’s ability to compete with rivals like Databricks, Microsoft, and Amazon for generative AI business. Snowflake’s stock has fallen 35% so far this year, to just above its 2020 initial public offering price, as questions have intensified about its AI strategy.
Snowflake already gives customers access to Google’s LLM as well as open-source LLMs developed by Meta Platforms and Mistral AI. But Anthropic’s LLMs are widely considered closest to those of market leader OpenAI in terms of performance and capabilities. Adding Anthropic’s LLMs to the mix could raise Snowflake’s profile with data scientists and AI researchers, which have typically used products from rival Databricks.
Anthropic’s LLMs are particularly strong at helping software developers write code, fix bugs and translate code into different programming languages. By some metrics OpenAI uses to evaluate models’ coding abilities, Anthropic’s models recently had an edge.
Many large Snowflake customers, such as banks, like to use LLMs to build applications on servers that are situated close to where they store their data, said the person with direct knowledge of the agreement. Adding Anthropic’s LLMs could help Snowflake convince customers to keep their data in its database as opposed to moving it to a cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services.
A Snowflake spokesperson declined to comment. An Anthropic spokesperson didn’t have a comment. Snowflake is due to report its latest quarterly earnings later today.
The Anthropic agreement could help Snowflake accelerate its plans to enable customers to build agents that handle tasks like updating business records in its database, which it outlined in an announcement earlier this month.
Snowflake has made several other moves this year to boost its AI offerings, such as launching tools for building AI chatbots that companies can train on their internal data. Snowflake in May acquired TruEra, a startup that helps developers evaluate and monitor AI models and apps powered by LLMs.
Snowflake earlier this year also reportedly tried to acquire Reka AI, a startup developer of LLMs, for more than $1 billion, but the companies couldn’t come to terms.