Snowflake is set to expand its startup accelerator on Thursday with an additional $200 million commitment.
A new infusion of capital follows a series of activities by Snowflake over the past few months, indicating the company’s growth ambitions.
Snowflake Startup Accelerator, formerly known as the Powered By Snowflake Funding program, invests in a wide range of early-stage startups. In particular, Accelerator is investing in startups building AI-based, industry-specific products on Snowflake. Accelerator startups receive access to technical support and co-marketing opportunities from Snowflake, as well as Amazon’s Public Cloud AWS credits.
Alumni from the previous cohort include Coalesce, Landingai from Andrew Ng, and 12 labs.
A portion of the fresh $200 million comes from new and existing Snowflake VC partners, including Bain Capital Ventures, Blackstone Innovations Investments, Bessemer Venture Partners, Capital One Ventures, General Catalyst, Greylock Partners, Hetz Ventures, Mayfield, NewBuild Venture Capita, NTTVC, and Virtue.
There are detailed printings to note. In a blog post, Snowflake pointed out that there is “no guarantee” that a particular company will receive funds or that the full target amount will be invested while participating VC companies may invest in Snowflake’s startup accelerator companies.
Snowflake has announced plans for a new 30,000-square-foot “AI hub” and a $20 million AI upskills program on the Menlo Park campus, but it continues to invest aggressively in AI. Earlier this week, the company expanded its partnership with Microsoft to provide access to Openai’s AI models. Late last year, Snowflake engraved a multi-year partnership between AI data pipeline company Anthropic and acquisition Datavolo.
Snowflake’s strategy seems to be paying off. The company broke Wall Street Analyst estimates for the latest fiscal quarter (quarter 2024) and generated revenue of $987 million.
Source link
