Snowflake Cortex Search – Adoption Trends and Co-Usage Data

Increasers of Snowflake

• Teradata: Some consumption moved to Snowflake
• Oracle and Palantir: Consolidating data silos
• General expansion: Not at the expense of other vendors, but due to increased data needs

Decreasers of Snowflake

• Databricks: Cited frequently as the primary beneficiary
• Azure and AWS: Gaining from cloud-native strategy shifts
• Google Cloud Platform: Benefiting from AI-native data warehousing strategies
• In-house solutions: Some companies reinvesting in internal tooling

 

Qualitative Commentary

The following sections present qualitative commentary gathered from individuals regarding Snowflake, organized into two main sections: Spend Increasers and Spend Decreasers. The proportion of participants Increasing vs. Decreasing spending may not be representative of the broader market, as this report aims to achieve a minimum threshold of representation from both spend groups. The common set of questions asked to each individual, which are later referenced in shorthand throughout each response block, include:

• How will your company's spend with Snowflake change over the next six months, as compared to the prior six months?
• What are the key drivers behind this change in spending?
• Is this change driven by more short-term needs or long-term strategic goals?
• Is this change in spend coming at the expense or benefit of another vendor or product? If so, which one(s) and why?
• How does Snowflake fit into your company's broader technology plans or long-term IT strategy?

 

Spend Increasers of Snowflake:

VP, North America, Retail/Consumer, Fortune 100 company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to increase spending with Snowflake due to increased data volume and usage, driven by both immediate needs and future goals, without impacting other vendors, as part of their strategy for efficient growth.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Due to increased data volume and usage.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: The change is driven by immediate needs and building towards the future.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: It is not coming at the expense of anything else.
• Strategic Fit: As continued growth happens, like all businesses, you want to be nimble and efficient.

Senior Director, North America, IT/TelCo, Fortune 100 company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to its AI/ML innovations, aligning with their focus on agentic AI and broader technology strategies.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Snowflake increased their AI/ML innovations with their intelligence and Cortex agents that we plan to leverage.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Yes, we plan to increase our focus on agentic AI.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No, we are increasing our budget for AI/ML.
• Strategic Fit: Snowflake fits well into both our broader tech and IT strategies with all the AI/ML tools and services as well as the data lake and data platform enhancements.

 

Director, North America, Healthcare/Pharma, Fortune 100 company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake over the next six months, driven by potential expansion to other divisions and acquisitions, as part of a long-term divisional strategy, while maintaining AWS as the enterprise standard.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: We use Snowflake in some divisional data warehouses. We might expand the use to other divisions using Snowflake. Also, [we] could expand [usage] in the right situation with some pending acquisitions.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic at the divisional level.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No, it's not at the expense [of another vendor] unless we swap out another vendor product that an acquisition business is using. [This is] TBD.
• Strategic Fit: It [will] not be our enterprise standard (AWS is that) but at the division level, Snowflake will continue to be a recommended product for the next 1-2 years. [The strategy is] TBD after that.

 

Director, North America, IT/TelCo, Fortune 100 company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake as part of a long-term strategy to consolidate data warehouses, onboard more users, and establish Snowflake as their primary cloud warehouse for reporting and analytics.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Onboarding more users and migrating data warehouses from Oracle to Snowflake.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Driven by long-term strategic goals.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Yes, various vendors including Oracle and Palantir. We are trying to consolidate silos as much as possible.
• Strategic Fit: We envision Snowflake to be our primary cloud warehouse for reporting and analytics.

 

Manager, North America, Retail/Consumer, Fortune 500 company | 11/06/2025

The company is increasing its spend with Snowflake as part of a long-term strategic effort to migrate from a legacy data warehouse, leveraging Snowflake's scalability and flexibility for data management.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: We are migrating from a legacy data warehouse to Snowflake.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: This is a long-term strategic effort.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No. Our move to Snowflake is not driven by any other vendor.
• Strategic Fit: Fits very well to leverage our data however and wherever we need without limits of legacy on-premises [systems'] limits to scalability.

 

Senior Manager, EMEA, Retail/Consumer, Fortune 500 company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to additional subscriptions and expanded usage, aligning with long-term strategic needs, AI implementation plans, and infrastructure development, while potentially replacing some Azure and Oracle products.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Additional subscriptions and expanded usage in [the] coming period.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Part of long-term strategic needs of business and IT priorities.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Combination of products [replacing] Azure [and] Oracle.
• Strategic Fit: Part of AI [implementation] plans and infrastructure development.

 

Senior Director, North America, Retail/Consumer, Fortune 1000 company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake as part of a long-term strategy to modernize their data platform, consolidate data sources, and improve their overall data strategy.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Data platform modernization, replace outdated data warehouse and reporting system.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goal, to consolidate all source data and reduce data discrepancy.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No, it is for improving data strategy.
• Strategic Fit: We already [have adopted] Snowflake, [this] is [continuing] the effort.

 

VP, APAC, Financials/Insurance, Global 1000 company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake as part of a long-term strategy to develop AI agents and implement more generative AI use cases, while also considering other cloud providers.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: With more Gen AI use cases [we are adopting a] further comprehensive AI Data Cloud platform.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term planning with larger AI agentic use cases being built with comprehensive AI cloud support.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: It is being distributed between AWS suite and Snowflake, and we are evaluating other partners also.
• Strategic Fit: Developing AI agents with Snowflake that can perform multi-step tasks, reason across diverse data sources.

 

Department Head, North America, Healthcare/Pharma, Global 1000 company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to rising data transactions and AI usage, aligning with long-term strategic goals and making Snowflake their sole approved data platform while phasing out competitors.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Increase in volume of transactions with data. Usage of Cortex AI module.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals as AI [usage] and data transactions will rise significantly.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Expansion of data space. We are sunsetting Talend and Informatica.
• Strategic Fit: It is the only approved data platform.

 

Director, North America, Industrials/Materials/Manufacturing, Global 1000 company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to its low analytics costs and IoT data ingestion features, aligning with long-term strategic goals to use Snowflake as a single platform for BI, data analytics, ML, and AI needs.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Low cost for analytics, features for supporting IoT data ingestion.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Driven by long-term strategic goals.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: At the expense of another product.
• Strategic Fit: Single platform for BI, data analytics, ML and AI needs.

 

Executive, EMEA, Services/Consulting, Large company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to more projects, ETL processes, and users, driven by short-term needs and project engagements rather than long-term strategy or competition with other vendors.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: We got more projects, more ETL, and more professionals using Snowflake.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: This is more driven by short-term needs than long-term [goals]. Our strategy could change based on changes and trends in the market.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: This is coming by itself and not driven by other reasons [related] to other vendors.
• Strategic Fit: We depend on the engagement [of] projects. The projects [on] which Snowflake is based are medium-term (18 months [from] now).

 

Director, North America, Retail/Consumer, Large company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to additional features and a longer commitment, driven by long-term strategic goals for data needs, AI/ML usage, and smarter data management.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Additional features and longer commitment.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals for data needs.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No, just pushing more data into Snowflake.
• Strategic Fit: For AI/ML [we plan to] increase usage and [implement] smarter data management.
  
  

Department Head, APAC, Services/Consulting, Large company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to client requirements, new client acquisition, and expansion of scope, aligning with long-term strategic goals and broader technology plans.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Client requirement, increase in additional scope. New client acquisition.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Depends, if the client is ready to work with a short term, we are on it but generally it's for the long-term strategic goals.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: On behalf of another vendor/product. Expansion in scope and addition of new segments/business channels.
• Strategic Fit: Getting the resources ready to channelize the overall need from the end customers/business.

 

Director, APAC, Services/Consulting, Large company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake for long-term strategic goals, focusing on AI-driven applications, integrated systems, and data analytics to enhance business continuity and customer connectivity.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: AI-driven business applications and integrated systems.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals for business continuity and faster data analytics.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No. This is part of our R&D budget.
• Strategic Fit: Data analytics and integrated platform to link customer with enterprise apps.

 

Senior Director, EMEA, Financials/Insurance, Large company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending with Snowflake due to long-term strategic goals, focusing on increased use of Cloud and AI capabilities, with Snowflake being considered a strategic partner.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Increase use of Cloud and AI capabilities.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Definitely long-term strategic goals.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No, this is induced by the needs evolving [within] the company.
• Strategic Fit: Snowflake is one of the strategic partners.

 

Senior Director, North America, Financials/Insurance, Large company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending with Snowflake due to increased data consumption, new data sharing workloads, and long-term strategic goals, with Snowflake being a key partner in their data and analytical strategy.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: There is increased data consumption, resulting in computing and storage requirements that scale with business growth, as well as new data sharing workloads.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals are the main drivers based on the data sharing and warehouse consolidation.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: This is a unique expense. We moved some Teradata consumption into Snowflake, but it is more new spend.
• Strategic Fit: They are [a] key partner for my data and analytical strategy.

 

Manager, North America, IT/TelCo, Large company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to growing usage, expanded adoption across teams, and migration of workloads from on-premises systems, aligning with their long-term strategy of using Snowflake as their main data platform.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Our use has grown. We are storing more data and running more queries. We also have new teams using the platform. Some workloads that were on-premises are now moved to Snowflake. We expect more data sharing with partners. These changes increase compute and storage needs, which raises spend.

 

Short/Long-Term Impact: This change is tied to long-term goals. We are moving more data and workloads into Snowflake as a standard platform. More teams will rely on it for analytics and shared data work. The growth is planned and steady, not a one-time spike.

• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Another vendor - Oracle databases.
• Strategic Fit: Snowflake is our main data platform. It helps us keep data in one place, so teams can query and share it easily. It supports business reporting, product analytics, and partner data work. As we move more systems to the cloud, Snowflake remains the core store and compute layer for data.

 

C-Level, APAC, IT/TelCo, Midsize company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to increase spending with Snowflake due to long-term strategic goals and increased business requirements, viewing Snowflake as a great fit for their technology strategy.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Increased usage due to increase in business requirements.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals have led to this increase.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No, this is due to our long-term strategic directions.
• Strategic Fit: It fits perfectly as a great technology player for us.

 

C-Level, North America, Services/Consulting, Small company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake as part of their long-term strategic goals, driven by increased usage and deployment across the company and its products, with Snowflake facilitating cloud data storage and access.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Usage will increase as we deploy [Snowflake] for our company and product.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: All long-term strategic goals, of course.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: We will continue to grow and use the product more.
• Strategic Fit: It facilitates our cloud data storage and access to said storage.

 

Senior Advisor / Consultant, EMEA, Services/Consulting, Small company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to increase spending on Snowflake due to annual licensing cost increases and additional seats, aligning with their long-term IT strategy for a scalable, cloud-agnostic data platform that supports data-driven decision making.

• Spend Direction: Increase (+6% or greater)
• Spend Change Driver: Increase in licensing costs starting April as annual uplift kicks in - connected to CPI. Also planning to increase number of seats.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: The increase will be at least for a period of one year. The true-up/true-down are done on an annual basis, so in February-March 2027, we will revisit the subscription numbers and reduce if the headcount goes down.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No connection to any other vendor. Increase is tied to increase in seats and annual price uplift.
• Strategic Fit: Snowflake aligns with our long-term IT strategy by providing a scalable, cloud-agnostic data foundation that consolidates disparate data sources into a single platform. It is a solution that has enabled us to fasten our analytics program at a reasonable cost as we are working towards modernizing our data architecture and prioritizing data-driven decision making.

 

Spend Decreasers of Snowflake:

Manager, North America, IT/TelCo, Fortune 100 company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake due to vendor consolidation and migration to a larger-scale cloud data warehouse platform, aligning with their long-term strategic goals.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Continued consolidation of our vendors is driving the decrease in spending.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: It is driven by long-term goals.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: We are migrating to another cloud data warehouse platform with bigger scale.
• Strategic Fit: Snowflake no longer fits into our strategic plans.

 

C-Level, North America, Retail/Consumer, Fortune 500 company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake over the next six months, driven by a long-term strategic shift to Databricks, which better aligns with their technology roadmap.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: We are switching to Databricks.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: This is driven by longer term goals. Databricks fits better into our overall tech roadmap.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Yes, it is. We will increase our footprint of Databricks.
• Strategic Fit: As of now, it does not fit into our long-term strategy. We are looking to deprecate it fully.

 

Department Head, APAC, Financials/Insurance, Global 1000 company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake over the next six months as part of a long-term strategy to reinvest in in-house solutions and reduce dependency on Snowflake.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Driving more savings to reinvest in-house.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals which include building in-house solutions.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: No, this is for in-house tooling and reinvestment.
• Strategic Fit: Snowflake is not a key player in the long-term strategy, and we would like to reduce our exposure and dependency [on] Snowflake.

 

Department Head, EMEA, Services/Consulting, Global 2000 company | 11/06/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake as part of a long-term strategy to consolidate vendors and fully adopt the Azure tech stack, benefiting Azure Data Lake and Databricks Data Lake.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Weaning away from Snowflake as we're consolidating providers.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals to consolidate vendors.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Coming at [the] benefit of Azure Data Lake and Databricks Data Lake.
• Strategic Fit: Does not fit anymore as we're fully diving into [the] Azure tech stack.

 

Manager, North America, Healthcare/Pharma, Global 2000 company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake due to a long-term strategic shift towards Databricks, which better aligns with their future technology vision and offers more than just warehousing capabilities.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Moving to a different platform.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goal. Snowflake doesn't feed into our future roadmap.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Yes, another vendor - Databricks. Databricks' roadmap and capabilities align better with our future technology vision.
• Strategic Fit: It doesn't. We need a platform that's more than just a warehousing capability.

 

Senior Director, EMEA, Other, Large company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake due to its complexity and low ROI, opting for alternative platforms that offer more functionality and ease of use, with Snowflake playing only a limited role in their long-term IT strategy.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Moving to alternative platforms offering more functionality and increased ease of use. This combined with Snowflake's complexity and low return on investment makes a compelling case.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term goals where speed of data consolidation and analysis is becoming ever more critical.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Architectural stack and changing needs [are] resulting in a multiple factor approach involving alternative processing styles with some uplift in the use of Redshift.
• Strategic Fit: Snowflake has only a limited position in our long-term architectural and technology roadmap, primarily supporting a number of historic systems and processes which over time will be replaced or removed.

 

VP, North America, Healthcare/Pharma, Large company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to decrease spending with Snowflake in favor of Databricks and Microsoft Azure as part of a long-term strategy, citing cost-effectiveness and better alignment with their cloud architecture.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Switch to Databricks as a more cost-effective alternative.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategy aligned to Azure cloud and delta sharing.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Yes. Databricks and Microsoft Azure.
• Strategic Fit: It does not. Architectural fit is not there.

 

Senior Director, North America, IT/TelCo, Large company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake in favor of migrating to Databricks for both short-term and long-term needs, citing greater usage and expertise with the alternative platform.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Migrating to Databricks for greater [usage].
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Both short-term and long-term needs.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Yes, Databricks. Greater [usage] and expertise.
• Strategic Fit: We're migrating away from it, so it doesn't have a long-term plan.

 

Department Head, North America, Financials/Insurance, Large company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to decrease Snowflake spending and eventually eliminate its use, strategically aligning with Google Cloud Platform for AI-native data warehousing and leveraging GCP's leadership in AI services.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: We are eliminating it in favor of BigTable and BigQuery, strategically aligning to Google platform for AI native data warehousing.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals [are] to leverage GCP leadership (and their technical stack) in AI and AI native services.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Google. Strategic partnership to leverage leadership in AI space.
• Strategic Fit: It does not [fit into our company's broader technology plans], and we will be moving completely off of the platform over time as resources permit.

 

Department Head, North America, IT/TelCo, Midsize company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake as part of a long-term strategic move to consolidate data platforms, benefiting Databricks and AWS, ultimately leading to Snowflake's deprecation in their enterprise data strategy.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: We are consolidating platforms and moving away from Snowflake over the next year. We will be ramping down and replacing [it] next year.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic. We currently have two data platforms and this will consolidate us on one.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: The benefit of another vendor, in this case both Databricks and AWS.
• Strategic Fit: Long term, it will be deprecated as we consolidate on another platform for our enterprise data needs.

 

Manager, EMEA, IT/TelCo, Midsize company | 11/04/2025

The company plans to decrease spending on Snowflake over the next six months due to a strategic shift towards Databricks for large-scale data aggregation and data lake implementations, rendering Snowflake obsolete in their long-term IT strategy.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Move towards Databricks due to large-scale data aggregation and data lake implementations.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term strategic goals of moving to Databricks.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Move to another vendor - Databricks.
• Strategic Fit: It was used for data management, but the larger move to Databricks has rendered Snowflake obsolete.

 

Engineer, North America, Retail/Consumer, Midsize company | 11/05/2025

The company plans to decrease spending with Snowflake due to cost concerns, seeking long-term savings, but hasn't decided on a replacement yet.

• Spend Direction: Decrease (-6% or worse)
• Spend Change Driver: Cost versus value, it is very expensive to us.
• Short/Long-Term Impact: Long-term cost savings for us.
• Beneficiaries/Detractors: Maybe, we haven't decided on a replacement yet.
• Strategic Fit: I am not sure, that decision is not up to me.