What it does
Snowflake sells a cloud-based platform that helps organizations bring data together, analyze it, build applications and use artificial intelligence. Its customers range from small organizations to large enterprises across industries. Sridhar Ramaswamy is chief executive officer.
The platform powers what Snowflake calls the AI Data Cloud: a network connecting customers, partners, developers, data providers and data consumers. Users can share data within their organizations or with outside parties, generally without copying or moving the underlying data. The Snowflake Marketplace lets customers access third-party data and applications and offer their own data products.
Customers use the platform for several kinds of work. Data engineering tools collect and prepare data; analytics tools help users query it and produce reports; and AI tools support tasks such as summarizing documents and building conversational assistants. Snowflake also offers tools for developing applications and for processing transactions alongside analytical data. Snowflake Intelligence lets customers create data agents that business users can use without coding.
Snowflake delivers its software as a service on public-cloud infrastructure. Its architecture separates storage, computing resources and cloud services, so those layers can scale independently. Customers can use data stored on the platform or connect data held in external storage. Snowflake also provides security and governance controls that customers can configure to manage access to their data. The platform runs across multiple public clouds and regions.
How it makes money
Snowflake generates most of its revenue by charging customers for the computing, storage and data transfer resources they consume. Customers select these resources separately. Computing charges depend on the type of resource and how long it is used or, for some features, the volume of data processed. Storage charges depend on the average amount of a customer’s data stored per month. Transfer charges depend on the volume moved, the cloud provider and the regions involved.
Customers typically sign capacity arrangements lasting one to four years or use the platform on demand and pay monthly in arrears. A capacity customer that consumes more than its initial commitment can buy additional capacity or renew early. If consumption is below the commitment, the customer may be able to carry unused capacity into a future period, generally when buying additional capacity. Snowflake says deferred revenue is not a meaningful indicator of revenue to be recognized in a particular future period.
The company has one reportable segment. Product revenue, principally from platform consumption, accounted for 95.5% of revenue in fiscal 2026; professional services and other revenue made up the remainder. Usage can continue as customers store, process and share data, but revenue depends on the resources they actually consume rather than solely on the number of users or contracts signed.
Fiscal 2026 revenue in Snowflake’s reportable segment was $4.7 billion, including $4.5 billion of product revenue.
Snowflake sells through a direct sales force as well as resellers and distributors. Its sales teams seek new customers and work with existing customers to move additional workloads onto the platform.
| Product or service | Revenue, FY2026 | Share | Change on the year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product revenue | $4.5 billion | 95.5% | 29.2% |
| Professional services and other revenue | $211.6 million | 4.52% | 29.1% |
Customers and how it sells
Snowflake serves organizations of different sizes across industries including financial services, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, technology and the public sector. It offers industry-specific solutions combining its platform with partner services and data sets. As of January 31, 2026, it had 13,328 customers, up from 10,996 as of January 31, 2025.
Its customer base included 790 of the Forbes Global 2000 as of January 31, 2026. Those customers contributed approximately 43% of revenue for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026. Snowflake’s net revenue retention rate was 125% as of January 31, 2026. The number of customers contributing more than $1 million in trailing 12-month product revenue rose from 576 to 733 as of January 31, 2025 and 2026, respectively.
The United States accounted for 75.2% of fiscal 2026 revenue. EMEA contributed $763.7 million, Asia-Pacific and Japan $271.0 million, and the other Americas $125.3 million.
Snowflake primarily sells through direct field and inside sales teams organized by customer industry, size and region. It also uses resellers and distributors, while some organizations begin with a self-service website trial. Partners including systems integrators and software and data providers help generate leads and deliver services.
| Region | Revenue, FY2026 | Share | Change on the year |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $3.5 billion | 75.2% | 27.6% |
| EMEA | $763.7 million | 16.3% | 32.9% |
| Asia-Pacific and Japan | $271.0 million | 5.79% | 44.1% |
| Other Americas | $125.3 million | 2.67% | 22.9% |
Suppliers and costs
Snowflake runs its platform on public-cloud infrastructure rather than manufacturing a physical product. Its architecture is built on three major public clouds across 53 regional deployments. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform are public-cloud providers that also compete with Snowflake.
Third-party cloud infrastructure is a principal use of cash, including spending related to graphics processing units and AI inference. Snowflake’s material contractual cash requirements include cloud infrastructure agreements, some with fixed or minimum services and fixed, minimum or variable prices. Its research and development organization also operates and scales the platform, including the underlying public-cloud infrastructure.
Other primary uses of cash include personnel, sales and marketing, overhead, acquisitions and strategic investments. Research and development teams design, test and deliver platform technology and features; Snowflake had 2,424 employees in that organization as of January 31, 2026. The company had 9,060 employees overall as of that date. Snowflake recorded a net loss of $1.3 billion for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026.
- Revenue$4.7B
- Cost of revenue−$1.5B
- Research and development−$2.0B
- Selling, general and administrative−$2.6B
- Operating income−$1.4B
Competitive position
Snowflake competes with public-cloud providers Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform across its markets. It also competes with other cloud companies, established providers of legacy databases and big-data products, observability providers, and emerging entrants. Snowflake expects competition to remain intense as technologies develop.
The company points to its architecture, ability to support multiple uses on one platform, data sharing, security, performance, pricing and interoperability as competitive factors. Its storage and computing layers scale independently, and the platform is available across multiple public clouds and regions. Customers can use familiar programming languages and connect some data held in external storage.
Our reading: The combination of multiple workloads and cloud deployments provides a meaningful source of differentiation, but the named cloud providers compete across the same markets and also supply infrastructure used by the platform.
Snowflake says its network becomes more valuable as more customers, partners and data providers exchange data through it. Customers can share live data and distribute data products and applications through the platform.
Our reading: That network can reinforce the platform as participation grows, although the evidence does not establish how difficult it is for a customer to move workloads elsewhere. Our reading: Patents and proprietary technology offer additional protection, but Snowflake itself places greater emphasis on its people and continued product development.
| Competitor | Where they compete | Threat (our reading) |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | Public cloud and Snowflake’s data platform markets | High |
| Microsoft Azure | Public cloud and Snowflake’s data platform markets | High |
| Google Cloud Platform | Public cloud and Snowflake’s data platform markets | High |
Growth opportunities
Snowflake’s growth strategy combines acquiring customers with increasing consumption by existing ones. It plans to invest in sales and marketing to replace legacy and big-data products, reach larger organizations and address regulated markets. For existing customers, it aims to encourage more data processing, storage and sharing, as well as adoption of additional uses for the platform.
The company plans continued research and development spending to add features and use cases. Its AI products let customers build agents and applications using enterprise data. Snowflake Postgres is intended to bring transactional and analytical workloads together, while the Native Application program supports companies building and distributing applications on the platform. In February 2026, Snowflake acquired Observe, which provides an AI-powered observability platform for managing and troubleshooting telemetry data.
Snowflake also plans to expand outside North America through investment in sales, research, support and public-cloud deployments in EMEA, Asia-Pacific and Japan, and Latin America. Its partner network includes systems integrators, technology providers and data providers that help reach customers and deliver services. The company expects partnerships to contribute to customer acquisition and sustained platform consumption.
Revenue increased from $3.6 billion in fiscal 2025 to $4.7 billion in fiscal 2026. The company’s strategy also calls for adding participants and data products to its marketplace and broader network.
- $1.2BFY2022
- $2.1BFY2023
- $2.8BFY2024
- $3.6BFY2025
- $4.7BFY2026
- $6.1BFY2027 guidance
Structural risks
- Consumption and pricing: Customer usage can fluctuate, including when customers optimize workloads to consume fewer resources. Competitor discounts and changes in Snowflake’s pricing model can also affect demand.
- Competition and adoption: Snowflake faces established cloud providers, legacy database vendors and emerging competitors. Potential customers may have invested substantial technical, financial and personnel resources in existing systems, making adoption difficult to predict.
- Cloud infrastructure and expenses: Results can be affected by the timing and cost of expanding public-cloud capacity, as well as research and development spending, including GPU expenses, and sales and marketing costs.
- Security and service continuity: Significant security breaches affecting the platform, customer accounts or data, as well as technical difficulties or interruptions to the platform, are risks to the business.
- Regulation and international operations: Data privacy, security and localization rules can require platform changes and engineering spending. International operations also face foreign-exchange, political, economic and regulatory risks.
- Customer budgets and AI adoption: Macroeconomic conditions have caused customers to rationalize budgets and optimize consumption. AI adoption can depend on regulatory standards, internal compliance reviews and mutually acceptable contract terms.
Bottom line
Our reading
Snowflake is a consumption-based software business whose growth depends on winning customers and getting them to run more data and AI workloads on its platform. Its sharing network and multi-cloud architecture can support differentiation, but it competes with major cloud providers and relies on public-cloud infrastructure. Consumption optimization, infrastructure spending and a continuing net loss are important counterweights to revenue growth.