Snowflake Plans ‘AI Hub’ and $200 Million in Startup Investments

Data cloud company Snowflake says it is opening a new Silicon Valley “AI hub.”

The new Menlo Park location, announced Thursday (Feb. 27), is designed to give developers, startups and business leaders a place to work on artificial intelligence (AI) efforts.

“Our technology is already at the heart of customers’ data and AI strategies, and now, we are taking it a step further by creating a physical space for people shaping the future of AI to connect, learn, and work,” Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said in a news release.

“Whether you’re a developer looking for hands-on experience, a startup founder looking for a place to collaborate, or an executive looking to explore the art of the possible, the Silicon Valley AI Hub will serve as the epicenter of AI development and collaboration.”

Set to open this summer, the hub will feature spaces designed for people “across the AI ecosystem,” per the release. Executives can collaborate and create partnerships, AI engineers can experiment with new technology, and early-stage startups gain a homebase for their work.

Meanwhile, the company, its startup accelerator and its venture capital partner are planning to invest up to $200 million in early stage startups, offering funding as well as technical assistance.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company said, “has also committed to provide up to $1 million in free Snowflake credits on AWS over four years to support startups building and offering applications on Snowflake’s platform.”

Snowflake’s announcement comes on the heels of a report earlier this week that Perplexity AI was creating a $50 million venture fund focused on U.S.-based pre-seed and seed AI startups.

The company, itself an AI startup, will invest in the fund, but outside limited partners will provide most of the capital, CNBC reported, citing unnamed sources. Perplexity last year closed a $500 million funding round that tripled its valuation to $9 billion.

AI startups have been raising significant amounts of funding lately, with three companies taking in — or preparing to take in — a combined $2.3 billion in the last week.

Together.ai, which is building an AI cloud for AI applications using open source models, recently raised $305 million in a Series B round. Cloud AI startup Lambda announced last week that it has raised $480 million to build a hyperscaler cloud for AI developers and end users.

And robotics company Figure, backed by OpenAI, Nvidia and Microsoft, is in reportedly talks to raise $1.5 billion in a Series C round.

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