Increasing focus on artificial intelligence is driving sales and changing the way clients interact with platforms
[SINGAPORE] Artificial intelligence is emerging as both a growth engine and a productivity driver for US cloud data company Snowflake, as Asian companies ramp up adoption and governments advance AI strategies.
CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy believes the increased focus on AI will not only drive sales, but also change the way clients interact with the platform.
“I would say that using AI to make Snowflake easier to set up and use will actually have a similar, if not greater, impact,” he said. business times.
Ramaswamy added that the company’s new product coding agent, Cortex Code, allows AI agents to be deployed in a fraction of the time previously required, reducing the time it takes for customers to unlock value.
Within Snowflake, he noted, AI has also reduced the time needed to deploy new projects. Previously, new products were born from product requirements documents, where designers conceived, reviewed, and implemented designs.
“All of my designers are now expected to base their code on a real code base and create working prototypes, so we’ve made significant changes to the way we create and deploy software,” Ramaswamy said.
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This shift in AI-powered workflows is trickling down to Snowflake customers, with AI agent coding tools being built to be more iterative, allowing customers to quickly configure and improve their agents. Previously, it might have taken three months to get a working version of the Snowflake AI agent.
new way of working
He noted that the switch to having their employees use AI was not a smooth process and required many iterations to figure out how to do it.
Still, he believes it’s an “exciting time” for the business, especially when teams share productivity gains – when tasks that could take weeks are completed within hours.
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This is good news for the New York Stock Exchange-listed company, which reported revenue of US$4.7 billion in fiscal year 2026 (ending January 31), up from US$3.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Losses for fiscal 2026 were approximately unchanged from the previous year at USD 1.3 billion. But product revenue, a key metric that Snowflake tracks, is increasing. Product revenue measures revenue based on platform consumption, excluding professional services and other revenue. In 2026, it increased by 27% to USD 4.5 billion.
Meanwhile, the company’s net revenue retention rate, a measure of how much customer spending is growing, is “very stable” at 125 percent, Ramaswamy added.
Ramaswamy pointed to Snowflake’s customers in Asia increasingly leveraging AI, and how they are driven to make changes and leverage technology as an enabler.
Singapore in particular has become an important market due to the government’s AI initiatives, from the National AI Strategy to the National AI Council.
“There’s a lot of focus right now on how the government actually participates in the game, and that’s going to extend across all industries,” said Jenny Koh, Snowflake’s Singapore country manager.
Governments in emerging markets in Southeast Asia are also considering transforming their data with AI. This could be an opportunity for Snowflake.
“We respect the desire of countries such as Singapore and India to ensure they have control over both their data and the systems needed to act on it, and we will work with them to ensure we create a mutually beneficial situation,” Ramaswamy said.
Looking to the future
As AI continues to accelerate the use of data, Snowflake remains focused on innovating its core data platform. Conversations with customers will ultimately be about how to derive business value from data, and AI can help make that happen, Ramaswamy said.
Recent geopolitical shocks have had minimal impact on business, he said. The lack of graphics processing units and chips has not had a major impact on Snowflake’s expansion, as the company relies on hyperscalers to provide its computing power.
In fact, skills may be the biggest challenge in growing a business in Asia.
The company is looking at training, working with schools and educational institutions to train students, as well as partners within the ecosystem.
In Singapore, Snowflake has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nanyang Technological University and Temasek University of Technology to use Snowflake’s Academy curriculum to train students.
“As much as we talk about platforms, we have to enable them to… unlock their potential,” Ko said.
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