Snowflake Boosts Accelerator with $200M Capital Infusion

Snowflake, the tech giant known for its cloud-based data storage solutions, has announced a major expansion of its startup accelerator with an additional $200 million in commitments. This move comes on the heels of a flurry of recent activities that underscore the company's ambitious growth plans. The Snowflake Startup Accelerator, previously called the Powered by Snowflake Funding Program, supports a wide array of early-stage startups. A key focus of the accelerator is investing in startups that are developing AI-based, industry-specific products on Snowflake's platform. These startups benefit from technical support, co-marketing opportunities, and AWS cloud credits provided by Snowflake. Notable alumni from past cohorts include Coalesce, Andrew Ng's LandingAI, and Twelve Labs. The new $200 million fund will be partly sourced from Snowflake's venture capital partners, both new and existing. These include heavyweights like 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. However, there's a catch. Snowflake's blog post clarifies that while these VC firms might invest in companies within the Snowflake Startup Accelerator, there's no assurance that any specific startup will secure funding or that the entire $200 million will be fully utilized. In addition to the accelerator expansion, Snowflake is doubling down on AI. The company recently unveiled plans for a new 30,000-square-foot "AI hub" at its Menlo Park campus and a $20 million AI upskilling program. Earlier this week, Snowflake expanded its partnership with Microsoft to provide access to AI models from OpenAI. Late last year, the company entered into a multi-year partnership with Anthropic and acquired Datavolo, an AI data pipeline firm. Snowflake's aggressive AI investments seem to be yielding results. The company surpassed Wall Street's expectations for its latest fiscal quarter (Q4 2024), reporting a robust $987 million in revenue.

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