According to Forbes, Snowflake just announced a major partnership with SAP that could boost its revenue growth rate by about five percentage points. The deal makes Snowflake’s AI platform available as an SAP solution extension for over 34,000 companies using SAP’s Business Data Cloud. Snowflake’s EVP Christian Kleinerman expressed excitement about the “meaningful business opportunity” in a November 3 interview. If just 5% of those SAP customers sign up, it could add roughly $1.1 billion to Snowflake’s estimated 2026 revenue of $5.5 billion. That would potentially push Snowflake’s growth from 32% to 47% next year. SAP has about 440,000 total customers – roughly 40 times Snowflake’s current customer base.
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The Data Integration Headache
Here’s the thing – this partnership solves a massive problem that’s been plaguing enterprises for years. Without direct access to SAP’s Business Data Cloud, companies have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get their data working together. They’re stuck using third-party tools, pulling data on schedules, and manually harmonizing financial and supply chain information before anyone can actually use it. Kleinerman called this out directly – it’s expensive, time-consuming, and frankly, a mess.
Now imagine you’re a company like AstraZeneca, which already works with both SAP and Snowflake. Their VP Russell Smith said this partnership “turbocharges” their ability to access and analyze real-time data. When you’re developing life-changing medicines, every minute matters. This isn’t just about convenience – it’s about accelerating mission-critical work.
<h2 id="growth-implications”>What This Means for Snowflake’s Growth
Let’s talk numbers. Snowflake’s current growth rate of 32% is impressive, but it’s been slowing from the hyper-growth days. A five percentage point boost would be massive for a company of Snowflake’s scale. But here’s where it gets really interesting – this could actually increase Snowflake’s revenue per customer too.
Snowflake’s business model is consumption-based. The more data customers access and the more computing resources they use, the more Snowflake makes. Kleinerman pointed out that once SAP customers start feeding their enterprise data into Snowflake, usage – and therefore revenue – should naturally increase. We’re not just talking about one-time customer additions here.
And let’s be real – SAP’s customer base is enormous. Even if only a fraction of their 34,000 Business Data Cloud customers sign up, that’s thousands of new enterprise accounts. These aren’t small businesses either – we’re talking about companies already invested in SAP’s ecosystem, meaning they have serious data needs and budgets.
The Bigger Picture
This isn’t SAP’s first rodeo in the data partnership game. They already work with Databricks and Google’s BigQuery. But Snowflake brings something different to the table – their focus on AI and semantic models could be the differentiator. SAP’s Irfan Khan talked about giving customers “true optionality,” which basically means they’re not forcing anyone into a single solution.
For Snowflake, this is about catching up in the enterprise application space. While they’ve dominated cloud data warehousing, penetrating the SAP-dominated ERP world has been tough. This partnership essentially gives them a backdoor into thousands of enterprises that run their entire business on SAP systems.
The timing couldn’t be better either. Every company is trying to figure out their AI strategy, and having clean, integrated data is the foundation. As SAP’s announcement emphasized, this combines decades of business application expertise with modern data platforms. It’s a compelling story for enterprises that want AI but don’t want to rebuild their entire data infrastructure.
The Real Impact
So will this actually move the needle? The executives wouldn’t give specific revenue projections, which is pretty standard for these kinds of announcements. But the math suggests it could be significant. $1.1 billion in potential additional revenue isn’t pocket change, even for a company Snowflake’s size.
More importantly, this addresses what Kleinerman called “a long line of customers waiting for this.” There are apparently hundreds or thousands of mutual customers who’ve been begging for easier integration between these platforms. When you solve a pain point that real customers are complaining about, that’s usually a good sign.
The partnership officially makes Snowflake’s platform available as an SAP solution extension, which means it’s SAP-supported and enterprise-ready. For risk-averse IT departments, that endorsement matters. It’s one thing to buy Snowflake separately – it’s another to have it fully integrated and supported within your existing SAP environment.
Bottom line? This looks like one of those rare partnerships where both sides genuinely benefit, and customers get something they actually want. Now we just have to wait and see how many of those 34,000 companies actually pull the trigger.
