Snowflake boosts Google partnership, integrates Gemini 3
By making the tech giant's LLM natively available in Cortex AI, the data cloud vendor is adding yet another significant tool to its evolving development suite.
Snowflake is starting the new year with a splash, unveiling an expanded partnership with Google Cloud that includes making the Gemini 3 large language model natively available in its Cortex AI development suite.
Just over a month ago, on Dec. 3, Snowflake similarly expanded its existing partnership with Anthropic and made Anthropic's Claude large language models (LLMs) natively available in Cortex AI. In addition to models from Google Cloud and Anthropic, Snowflake also makes models from Meta, Mistral and OpenAI -- among others -- natively available in Cortex AI.
Native availability differs from other means of connecting AI development environments such as Cortex AI with external models by directly integrating the model with the platform's architecture, including its access to data and enforcement of governance and security. Other methods, such as API integrations or plug-ins, require additional, often complex, configurations.
As a result, making Gemini 3 -- which now rates as one of the highest performing LLMs in benchmark testing -- natively available in Cortex AI is valuable for joint Snowflake and Google Cloud customers, according to Stephen Catanzano, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget.
"The significance of Snowflake making Gemini 3 natively available in Cortex AI is substantial," he said. "It … eliminates the need to move or copy data across platforms, ensuring compliance and security while enabling faster development and deployment of AI applications."
In addition, the native availability of another highly regarded LLM helps broaden Snowflake's appeal to enterprises looking for comprehensive data and AI capabilities in a single platform, Catanzano continued.
"We see the market looking for complete platforms," he said.
Beyond the native availability of Gemini 3 in Cortex AI, Snowflake's expanded partnership with Google Cloud, which was revealed on Jan. 6, includes go-to-market alignment, new cross-selling opportunities and collaboration across global markets.
Joining forces
Snowflake and Google Cloud first partnered in 2019, making Snowflake's data warehousing platform available on Google Cloud.
The significance of Snowflake making Gemini 3 natively available in Cortex AI is substantial. It … eliminates the need to move or copy data across platforms, ensuring compliance and security while enabling faster development and deployment of AI applications.
Stephen CatanzanoAnalyst, Omdia
As Snowflake expanded beyond its roots in data management into AI development after OpenAI's November 2022 launch of ChatGPT sparked surging interest in AI, the vendor continued to collaborate with Google Cloud.
For example, Snowflake is available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, so customers can purchase Snowflake within their existing Google Cloud deployments, Snowflake is integrated with Google Cloud's BigQuery data warehouse as well as Google Cloud's own AI development suite, and joint customers are able to share data between the two platforms without the need for data movement.
Now, the partnership includes the native availability of Gemini 3 in Cortex AI in a move motivated by customer feedback, according to Dwarak Rajagopal, vice president of AI engineering and research at Snowflake.
"Customers want to use the latest, highest-performing models directly on their enterprise data without the headache of managing separate infrastructures or having to move data," he said. "As these customers move … from experimentation to production-ready AI, Snowflake is committed to providing them with access to state-of-the-art models like Gemini in our secure and governed environment."
Perhaps the biggest benefit of Gemini 3's native availability in Cortex AI will be eliminating some of the difficulties joint Snowflake and Google Cloud customers previously had when trying to use the LLM within the development environment, according to Donald Farmer, founder and principal of TreeHive Strategy.
He noted that late last year a client wanted to run Gemini in Cortex AI because they use Google Cloud for their analytics needs. With Gemini not natively integrated, the client tried other LLMs but was unsuccessful due to problems with data security, compliance and latency.
"This integration of Gemini should perform better for them," Farmer said. "And now that Gemini is a highly competitive model in terms of reasoning and accuracy, I think they will be delighted."
While beneficial to joint Snowflake and Google Cloud customers, Snowflake's tightened alliance with one of the three main hyperscale cloud providers could give the appearance of favoritism by a vendor that professes to be cloud-agnostic. However, instead of having an adverse effect on its relationships with AWS and Microsoft, the expanded partnership could serve to help Snowflake tighten its bonds with AWS and Microsoft as well, according to Farmer.
"It more likely deepens its … positioning and gives it leverage with all three hyperscalers," he said. "If anything, this Google AI integration may pressure AWS and Microsoft to deepen their own Snowflake integrations -- catalog unification, marketplace, AI services -- to remain attractive hosting venues for Snowflake workloads."
Beyond benefitting existing Snowflake and Google Cloud customers, the expanded partnership continues Snowflake's AI evolution.
After ChatGPT's launch, vendors such as Databricks and Microsoft were quick to react to rising customer interest in generative AI (GenAI) development by creating development suites designed to simplify building AI tools. Snowflake, however, was much slower to react, not fully committing to AI development until February 2024 when CEO Frank Slootman stepped down and was replaced by Sridhar Ramaswamy.
Since then, Snowflake has matched the aggressiveness of its peers and similarly built a strong development suite for GenAI and now agentic AI, according to Catanzano.
"Snowflake has made significant strides in its AI capabilities, both in simplifying its platform for users and enabling them to build their own AI tools," he said. "They were -- and may still be -- lagging behind competitors like Databricks, AWS and Google. But these partnerships will help. Its collaboration with Google Cloud … demonstrates its commitment to becoming a leader in the AI data cloud space."
One of the customers now using Snowflake in conjunction with Google Cloud for its analytics and AI needs is financial robotic process automation vendor BlackLine, according to Snowflake. While one customer's use of two platforms together is rarely noteworthy, having a customer with such complicated AI needs is evidence that Snowflake's development environment is competitive and the native availability of Gemini 3 is significant, according to Farmer.
"BlackLine really understands the complexities of automation, so for them to buy into Google's agentic roadmap is a significant endorsement," he said.
Looking ahead
As Snowflake plans its product development roadmap, the vendor's guiding principle is to enable customers to advance AI initiatives past the pilot stage and into production where they can make a measurable business impact, according to Rajagopal.
Toward that end, he noted that the vendor plans to invest in improving Snowflake Intelligence, an agent that enables customers to explore structured as well as unstructured data using natural language. In addition, Snowflake intends to build on partnerships such as its association with Google Cloud.
"We're focused on providing model choice and interoperability so our customers can take advantage of rapid innovation in the AI ecosystem without sacrificing trust, simplicity or performance," Rajagopal said.
Adding more model choice would be wise, according to Catanzano. In addition, he suggested that Snowflake add new partnerships to provide access to complementary capabilities as well as develop industry-specific versions of its AI capabilities to make it easier for enterprises in those industries to create agents and other AI applications.
"Strengthening its ecosystem through partnerships and expanding its global reach will help attract new users and solidify its position as a leader in the AI-driven data cloud market," Catanzano said.
Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management.
