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Snowflake Securely Integrates Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to Provide Access to the Latest OpenAI Models with Expanded Microsoft Partnership

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Snowflake Securely Integrates Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to Provide Access to the Latest OpenAI Models with Expanded Microsoft Partnership
News

News

Snowflake Securely Integrates Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to Provide Access to the Latest OpenAI Models with Expanded Microsoft Partnership

2025-02-27 05:07 Last Updated At:05:20

No-Headquarters/BOZEMAN, Mont.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 26, 2025--

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the AI Data Cloud company, today announced an expanded partnership with Microsoft that will empower enterprises to build easy, efficient, and trusted AI-powered apps and data agents with OpenAI’s models directly in Snowflake Cortex AI, Snowflake’s fully managed AI service. Snowflake Cortex AI will integrate Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service in Azure AI Foundry, making OpenAI’s state-of-the-art models available for use on Microsoft Azure regions within Snowflake, and optimized to reason across audio, video, and text in real-time. Now, thousands of global enterprises will be able to create data agents powered by OpenAI’s models in the secure boundary of Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud — ultimately saving businesses time and money.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250226499406/en/

“We’re expanding our long-standing partnership with Microsoft to deliver the best of OpenAI’s innovations directly to our customers, further advancing our promise to bring easy, efficient, and trusted AI to enterprises around the world,” said Christian Kleinerman, EVP of Product, Snowflake. “There’s enormous power in our customers being able to use OpenAI models directly in Snowflake’s secure platform, unlocking multimodal, agentic, and conversational AI use cases that drive high impact.”

By bringing OpenAI’s models to Cortex AI through an integration with Azure OpenAI Service, Snowflake further solidifies its leadership in providing users with frontier AI models within the same unified governance framework as their data. Snowflake’s cross-region and cross-cloud AI inference also enables global customers to seamlessly access OpenAI’s models from any cloud or region, without needing complex integrations or manual setup. Access to these models is secured with Snowflake's strong security guarantees through deep integrations with Microsoft Azure, providing protected connections for customers on any cloud provider. OpenAI’s models provide advanced reasoning and instruct capabilities, allowing users to quickly build scalable AI apps and data agents that deliver accurate, grounded insights using their enterprise data. Snowflake customers achieve this because OpenAI’s models run within the security boundary of Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud. Snowflake Horizon Catalog ’s strong enterprise-grade compliance, security, privacy, discovery, and collaboration capabilities natively integrated into Cortex AI allows users to focus on driving impact with OpenAI’s models.

“Enterprises are looking to leverage their proprietary data to create AI differentiation in ways that bring the richest experiences to the world, and the Snowflake partnership with Azure OpenAI Service through Azure AI Foundry will empower our joint customers to deliver intuitive and trustworthy app experiences even faster,” said Asha Sharma, CVP, Head of Product, Microsoft AI Platform. “It’s our shared data-centric approach to AI that helps break down barriers to production for businesses of all sizes.”

Introducing OpenAI to the AI Data Cloud Through Azure OpenAI Service Integration

According to a recent MIT Technology Review Insights report, Data Strategies for AI Leaders, 59% of respondents cited data governance, security, or privacy as a challenge to deploying generative AI. For today’s enterprises, trust and security are paramount to the success of AI initiatives. With OpenAI’s models available directly in Cortex AI through Azure OpenAI Service, enterprises benefit from Snowflake’s built-in data governance, access controls, and monitoring, enabling customers to protect their most sensitive information.

With OpenAI’s models in the AI Data Cloud, joint customers of Snowflake and Microsoft can now seamlessly combine structured and unstructured data to deliver a richer, more engaging user experience. OpenAI’s models will be available on select Microsoft Azure regions in the United States, with plans to expand globally.

In addition to OpenAI’s models, Snowflake offers various models from leading providers including Anthropic, DeepSeek, Meta, Mistral, and more, alongside Snowflake’s Arctic open source language and embedding models. Snowflake is committed to making the top-performing models seamlessly accessible to users within Cortex AI, allowing customers the choice and flexibility to select the best model for their specific use case.

Snowflake Brings Data Agents to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams

Through this expanded partnership, Snowflake is collaborating with Microsoft to make Snowflake Cortex Agents available for end users in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams (anticipated general availability in June 2025). Powered by Cortex AI, Cortex Agents will allow Microsoft’s enterprise customers to interact with their structured and unstructured Snowflake data in natural language directly from within Microsoft apps — streamlining their ability to ask questions and get insights from the core Microsoft tools they use every day. With this integration, AI-driven insights become more accessible for users at every skill level, improving productivity and helping fuel better decision-making across the enterprise. Additionally, developers can also leverage these Snowflake features through convenient REST APIs to customize and build secure natural language interfaces between Microsoft 365 apps and their data in Snowflake. Leading data and engineering teams will be able to leverage Cortex AI through Microsoft Copilot to accelerate business insights.

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Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains express and implied forward-looking statements, including statements regarding (i) Snowflake’s business strategy, (ii) Snowflake’s products, services, and technology offerings, including those that are under development or not generally available, (iii) market growth, trends, and competitive considerations, (iv) the integration, interoperability, and availability of Snowflake’s products with and on third-party platforms, and (v) the proposed strategic partnership with Microsoft. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including (i) risks related to unforeseen technical, operational, or business challenges impacting the timing, scope, or success of our strategic partnerships and (ii) the risks described under the heading “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and the Annual Reports on Form 10-K that Snowflake files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. As a result, you should not rely on any forward-looking statements as predictions of future events.

© 2025 Snowflake Inc. All rights reserved. Snowflake, the Snowflake logo, and all other Snowflake product, feature and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Snowflake Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names or logos mentioned or used herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). Snowflake may not be associated with, or be sponsored or endorsed by, any such holder(s).

About Snowflake

Snowflake makes enterprise AI easy, efficient and trusted. More than 11,000 companies around the globe, including hundreds of the world’s largest, use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to share data, build applications, and power their business with AI. The era of enterprise AI is here. Learn more at snowflake.com (NYSE: SNOW).

Snowflake Securely Integrates Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to Provide Access to the Latest OpenAI Models with Expanded Microsoft Partnership (Graphic: Business Wire)

Snowflake Securely Integrates Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to Provide Access to the Latest OpenAI Models with Expanded Microsoft Partnership (Graphic: Business Wire)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet Tuesday ahead of Sen. Lindsey Graham's funeral, their second sit-down this month and after a far-right activist with the U.S. president’s ear had a widely publicized change of heart on Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Trump is set to welcome Zelenskyy to the White House as the Ukrainian leader travels to Washington to honor Graham, whose final act as a public official was visiting Kyiv and securing an agreement on a package of sanctions that seek to punish countries that purchase Russian oil, gas and other exports.

But Zelenskyy is now being bolstered by an unusual source: Laura Loomer, known primarily for her incendiary social media posts and her influence with the president. Traveling through Ukraine, Loomer has witnessed Moscow’s barrage firsthand and interviewed Zelenskyy while admitting she was “bamboozled by Russian propaganda.”

Loomer said she spoke to Trump after she met with Zelenskyy in Ukraine last week, and she also expects to meet with the U.S. president once she returns from her trip.

“It’s looking good for Ukraine, right?” Loomer said during an interview with The Associated Press. “Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good.”

Ahead of the meeting, Zelenskyy has also warned that Russia has been aiding Iran as the war persists by capturing satellite imagery of U.S. bases in the Gulf region that later appear in Iran. The Ukrainian president also asserted that there was a “clear correlation” between Russia’s images and subsequent Iranian strikes.

“The purpose is clear,” Zelenskyy said earlier this month. “None of us in the world should turn a blind eye to one very simple fact: Evil always seeks ways to make things worse and spread further.”

On Monday, Trump downplayed any impact of potential Russian assistance for Iran.

“I don’t think they’ve been doing it, certainly not at a high level,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he traveled to Michigan. “And if they have, it has been very un-impactful.”

Still, he said he would raise the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskyy has a busy itinerary during his latest visit to Washington. In addition to his White House meeting, Zelenskyy will head to the Capitol to meet with senators on Tuesday evening after Graham’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Republican leadership is hoping to advance Graham’s sanctions legislation this week, although the Senate is juggling several other priorities before lawmakers leave Washington for the August recess.

The bill has dozens of backers from both parties and is seen as the main policy tribute to Graham, who died unexpectedly this month from a tear in his aorta. It imposes tariffs on goods from the world’s top five purchasers of Russia oil or natural gas, including China and India.

The legislation also includes sanctions against Putin, senior Russian political and military leaders, and Russian financial institutions and energy projects.

Trump met with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the NATO summit earlier this month in Ankara, Turkey, and announced that the U.S. will give Ukraine a license to make Patriot air defense systems, a long-running request from Kyiv in order to counter Russian missile attacks.

The air defense systems are expensive to make and are in high demand. Noting that he and Zelenskyy have “actually developed a good relationship,” Trump said the U.S. will help Ukraine produce the Patriots and that the country would be able to produce them “pretty quickly.”

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Laura Loomer, right, interviews Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Thursday July 23, 2026, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Laura Loomer, right, interviews Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Thursday July 23, 2026, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

FILE - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks od during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks od during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

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