Snowflake plans to broaden its startup accelerator with $200 million in further commitments, the tech big that makes a speciality of cloud-based information storage mentioned Thursday.
The new injection of capital follows a string of exercise by Snowflake over the previous a number of months that illustrates that firm’s development ambitions.
The Snowflake Startup Accelerator, previously often known as the Powered by Snowflake Funding Program, invests in a broad vary of early-stage startups. Notably, the accelerator invests in startups constructing AI-based industry-specific merchandise on Snowflake. Startups within the accelerator obtain technical assist from Snowflake and entry to co-marketing alternatives, in addition to credit for Amazon’s public cloud, AWS.
Graduates from earlier cohorts embrace Coalesce, Andrew Ng’s LandingAI, and TwelveLabs.
A portion of the contemporary $200 million will come from Snowflake’s new and current VC companions, together with 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.
There’s some fantastic print to pay attention to. Snowflake famous in a weblog publish that whereas collaborating VC companies might put money into Snowflake Startup Accelerator firms, there’s “no assure” that any explicit firm will obtain funding or that the total goal quantity will probably be invested.
Snowflake, which additionally introduced plans for a brand new 30,000-square-foot “AI hub” at its Menlo Park campus and a $20 million AI upskilling program, continues to speculate aggressively in AI. Earlier this week, the corporate introduced an expanded partnership with Microsoft to supply entry to AI fashions from OpenAI. Late final yr, Snowflake inked a multi-year partnership with Anthropic and purchased Datavolo, an AI information pipeline agency.
Snowflake’s technique seems to be paying off. The firm beat Wall Street analyst estimates for its most up-to-date fiscal quarter (This fall 2024), notching $987 million in income.
