Snowflake has reached an agreement to acquire Samooha, a move that will enhance the data cloud vendor’s ability to support the development of data clean rooms for its customers.
Data clean rooms are important for enabling users to securely and effectively combine proprietary and third-party data while maintaining the privacy of sensitive information. This is increasingly crucial as organizations look to collaborate with partners to improve decision-making.
While Snowflake already offers tools for building data clean rooms, the acquisition of Samooha will strengthen and improve these capabilities. According to Stephen Catanzano, an analyst at TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, this acquisition is not only a smart move for Snowflake, but also a necessary one.
Competitors like Google, AWS, Helios, and Duality also provide data clean room capabilities, indicating the growing importance of secure and governed data exchange.
Samooha, established in 2022 and based in Los Altos, Calif., specializes in cross-cloud collaboration tools, including data clean rooms. Snowflake Ventures was one of the lead investors in Samooha’s funding round, which raised $12.5 million in February 2023.
This acquisition is the ninth for Snowflake in 2023, following its acquisition of Neeva in May. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it is subject to customary closing conditions.
Rising importance
As organizations strive to enhance decision-making and develop generative AI applications using their own data, the need for technologies that enable collaboration while ensuring accuracy and security becomes increasingly crucial.
For instance, the combination of proprietary data with generative AI platforms requires critical capabilities such as vector search for effective data discovery.
Data clean rooms are becoming increasingly significant, especially in brand marketing, as they provide a secure way to share data between collaborating companies while protecting privacy.
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GenAI potential
While data clean rooms are not currently a standard part of the generative AI process, they could become important as organizations develop their own private language models.
As organizations create more language models and share data insights, data clean rooms could become an integral part of the generative AI development process.
Snowflake’s acquisition of Samooha is expected to play a significant role in this evolving landscape.
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