We are thrilled to announce the private preview availability of OpenAI GPT 5.6, OpenAI's latest model, on Snowflake Cortex AI. As a launch partner with OpenAI, we're providing same-day availability of OpenAI GPT 5.6 in private preview. It is available within the secure Snowflake perimeter for use with Snowflake Cortex AI Functions and Cortex REST API and coming soon for Snowflake CoCo and Snowflake CoWork.
OpenAI GPT 5.6
GPT-5.6 is OpenAI's most capable series of frontier models to date, providing notable improvements in agentic coding, computer use, and knowledge work. GPT 5.6 Sol is OpenAI’s strongest model yet bringing improved capabilities in coding, biology and cybersecurity. Terra, a balanced model for everyday work; and Luna, a fast and affordable model. Terra has competitive performance compared to GPT‑5.5 while being 2x cheaper and Luna brings strong capability at a lower cost.
Source: OpenAI, Jul 9, 2026
What you can do with OpenAI GPT 5.6 on Snowflake
The GPT 5.6 models join other leading frontier models in Snowflake Cortex AI, enabling a wide range of enterprise use cases, all within Snowflake’s perimeter. With GPT 5.6, you can:
- Speed up development with CoCo: Snowflake’s AI coding agent understands your enterprise data, governance policies and workflows, enabling teams to go from idea to production quickly without breaking trust or impacting scale. Now, with GPT-5.6, CoCo enables improved reasoning, code generation, support for more complex, long-running tasks and agentic execution, bringing secure, Snowflake-aware assistance directly into Snowsight interface, the CLI and local dev tools. For data engineers, analysts and builders, it turns natural language into production-ready pipelines, analytics and AI agents — collapsing weeks of glue work into minutes, while staying governed, interoperable and enterprise-grade. You can try OpenAI GPT-5.6 in private preview using /model command within the CLI:
- Build personal work agents: Snowflake CoWork introduces a new category of agents designed to transform how organizations work, collaborate and innovate by fostering a truly data-driven culture. Every employee, regardless of technical depth, can ask complex questions in natural language, uncover the "why" behind every "what" and take confident action, all within Snowflake's secure and governed perimeter. For developers, admins and builders, GPT-5.6 will extend this foundation, enabling the creation of advanced agents that reason across complex data, write and execute code with greater autonomy and orchestrate analytical and operational workflows.
- Analyze structured and unstructured data with unparalleled precision: Cortex AI Functions make it easy to build scalable AI pipelines across multimodal enterprise data using SQL. Cortex AI Functions offer high-performance processing at a lower cost than manually orchestrated AI pipelines, enabling trusted insights across the enterprise while maintaining the security and governance capabilities Snowflake is known for. For example, with the AI_COMPLETE function, analysts can apply natural language instructions directly in SQL, leveraging models such as GPT 5.6 Luna.
SELECT AI_COMPLETE(
'openai-gpt-5-6-luna',
PROMPT('Review the following financial filing and summarize key revenue trends, margin changes, and any notable risk factors mentioned: {0}', my_table.filing)) FROM my_table
- Developers can build AI applications closer to their secure data: Use the Cortex REST API to build agentic enterprise applications within the Snowflake security perimeter. They can leverage new capabilities such as GPT-5.6’s adjustable effort levels, enabling the model to balance reasoning depth and latency on a task. Developers can get started quickly using the OpenAI SDK by pointing it to their Snowflake Cortex REST API endpoint, enabling a seamless integration with familiar Anthropic tooling.
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
api_key="<SNOWFLAKE_PAT>",
base_url="https://<account-identifier>.snowflakecomputing.com/api/v1/openai"
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
model="openai-gpt-5-6-sol",
messages=[
{
"role": "system",
"content": "You are a helpful business analyst"
},
{
"role": "user",
"content":
"Sales are down 18% in Q2. We had lower ad spend and reduced campaign performance in APAC. Can you analyze the image below to examine the cause?"
},
{
"type": "image_url",
"image_url": {
"url": "<base64 url>"
}
}
]
)
print(response.choices[0].message)
Moving agentic AI from concept production is now a strategic imperative. Powered by OpenAI's GPT 5.6, agents can handle complex, long-running tasks with greater consistency and reduced supervision, driving real work forward at scale. With multiple entry points from CoCo CLI to CoWork, Cortex AI Functions and REST APIs, customers can easily adopt this capability and accelerate their path to high-impact, production-ready agentic AI at scale.
Learn more
Read our latest announcement for CoCo, and learn more about it here.
Read more about the latest CoWork innovations and click here to learn more.
Get Started with MCP Connectors in CoWork using this guide.
Forward-looking statements
This article contains forward-looking statements, including about our future product offerings, and are not commitments to deliver any product offerings. Actual results and offerings may differ and are subject to known and unknown risk and uncertainties. See our latest 10-Q for more information.
