Snowflake Expands Its Business Accelerator With $200 Million In Fresh Funding

Snowflake Expands Its Business Accelerator With $200 Million In Fresh Funding

The cloud-based data storage tech firm Snowflake announced on Thursday that it will add $200 million in new commitments to its startup accelerator.

The recent cash infusion comes after a series of actions taken by Snowflake in recent months that demonstrate the company’s aspirations for expansion.

Investing in a variety of early-stage entrepreneurs, the Snowflake Startup Accelerator was formerly known as the Powered by Snowflake Funding Program. Of particular note is the accelerator’s investment in entrepreneurs developing industry-specific AI-based applications using Snowflake. Startups in the accelerator program get access to co-marketing opportunities, technical assistance from Snowflake, and credits for Amazon’s public cloud, AWS.

Coalesce, Andrew Ng’s LandingAI, and TwelveLabs are among the graduates from earlier batches.

Snowflake’s new and current venture capital partners, including Bain Capital Ventures, Blackstone Innovations Investments, Bessemer Venture Partners, Capital One Ventures, General Catalyst, Greylock Partners, Hetz Ventures, Mayfield, NewBuild Venture Capital, NTTVC, and Virtue, will contribute a portion of the additional $200 million.

You need to be mindful of the fine print. While participating venture capital firms may invest in Snowflake Startup Accelerator startups, Snowflake stated in a blog post that there is “no guarantee” that any specific company will receive money or that the entire goal amount will be invested.

Snowflake continues to make significant investments in AI, as evidenced by its announcement of plans for a $20 million AI upskilling program and a new 30,000-square-foot “AI hub” at its Menlo Park site. The business said earlier this week that it has extended its collaboration with Microsoft to provide access to OpenAI’s AI models. Late last year, Snowflake purchased Datavolo, an AI data pipeline company, and signed a multi-year agreement with Anthropic.

Snowflake’s plan seems to be working. In its most recent fiscal quarter, the company generated $987 million in revenue, exceeding the projections of Wall Street analysts.