By Sabela Ojea

Snowflake is making a $200 million bet on its artificial intelligence offering through an expanded startup accelerator program and a new AI hub in Silicon Valley.

The data-cloud company on Thursday said that its redesigned startup accelerator program, launched in November of 2023 as a $100 million funding scheme for early-stage startups, will also help startups get additional capital to grow their businesses in the AI data cloud.

Amazon.com has committed to provide up to $1 million in free Snowflake credits on Amazon Web Services over four years to support startups building and offering applications on Snowflake's platform, the company said.

Snowflake said that its new nearly 30,000 square foot Silicon Valley space, set to open this summer, will serve as a common place for developers, startups and business leaders to discuss and shape the future of AI.

In addition, Snowflake said that it will invest $20 million to train and certify more than 100,000 users on the Snowflake AI data cloud by 2027 without a cost for learners, and upskill a million people on data and AI by 2029.

Snowflake's investment plans came a day after the company forecast higher-than-expected product revenue growth for the current fiscal year from the contribution of new product features and the expansion of its Gen. AI platform Cortex.

Write to Sabela Ojea at sabela.ojea@wsj.com; @sabelaojeaguix

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 27, 2025 13:49 ET (18:49 GMT)

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