Announcing OpenAI GPT-5 on Snowflake Cortex AI

We are thrilled to announce that OpenAI’s most advanced model, GPT-5, is now available natively on Snowflake Cortex AI for customers to use.

GPT-5, GPT-5 mini, GPT-5 nano and GPT-5 chat are available in public preview within the secure Snowflake perimeter for use with Cortex AISQL and Cortex REST API, and will be coming soon in Snowflake Intelligence (public preview) and Cortex Agents (general availability soon).

OpenAI GPT-5 models

GPT-5 is OpenAI’s most advanced model, offering major improvements in reasoning, code quality and user experience. It handles complex coding tasks with minimal prompting, provides clear explanations, and introduces enhanced agentic capabilities, making it a powerful coding collaborator and intelligent assistant for all users.

What you can do with OpenAI GPT-5 on Snowflake

OpenAI’s GPT‑5 joins other leading frontier models in Cortex AI, enabling a wide range of enterprise use cases—all within Snowflake’s secure, governed environment. The GPT‑5 models are particularly well-suited for:

Transforming data into actionable intelligence with Snowflake Intelligence, which is designed to bridge the data-to-action gap. It turns data into actionable intelligence by allowing business users to ask complex questions in natural language and receive trusted, actionable insights from both structured and unstructured data. By combining GPT-5’s advanced reasoning with Snowflake’s security and governance capabilities, teams can investigate in-depth business questions and explore the "why" behind the "what."
Analyzing multimodal data. Combine GPT-5 with Cortex AISQL to power advanced analytics across multimodal data such as text, images and other data types, all through standard SQL. By using native SQL functions like AI_COMPLETE, analysts can build fast, cost-efficient AI pipelines to classify, filter and synthesize insights from both structured and unstructured data without leaving their data warehouse.
Building intelligent systems. Use GPT‑5 with Cortex Agents to create systems that plan, reason, and act on both structured and unstructured enterprise data. Powered by Snowflake’s secure retrieval stack, including Cortex Analyst and Cortex Search, GPT‑5 allows Cortex Agents to resolve increasingly complex business questions.
Powering interactive AI apps. With the Cortex REST API, customers can use GPT‑5 to create low-latency, interactive applications like chatbots, copilots or workflow assistants that reason over enterprise data. Developers can embed GPT‑5 into native apps built on Snowflake or connected apps in a customer’s environment, providing secure, governed gen AI experiences that keep data in place while delivering personalized interactions across various tools and apps.

Snowflake Cortex AI is a suite of integrated features and services that include fully managed LLM inference and easy retrieval of data, so that customers can quickly analyze unstructured data alongside their structured data and expedite the building of agentic AI applications. Cortex’s unified AI and data platform helps organizations turn AI concepts into reality in days. Enterprises of all sizes and industries can now implement a range of use cases from text summarization and sentiment analysis to the development of powerful AI agents.

Using OpenAI GPT-5 on Snowflake

With Cortex AI, accessing models is easy. You don’t have to manage integrations, and governance is consistent across data and AI. You can simply access the GPT-5 models in one of the supported regions. In non-supported regions, you can access them with cross-region inference enabled.

Cortex AISQL

Cortex AISQL makes it easy to build scalable AI pipelines across multimodal enterprise data using familiar SQL. Cortex AISQL delivers 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 state-of-the-art models like GPT‑5.

SELECT * from AI_COMPLETE('openai-gpt-5', PROMPT('what is the AI/ML adoption highlight from Snowflake Q1FY26?: {0}'))

According to provided information, more than 5,200 accounts use Snowflake AI/ML features in Q1 FY26, indicating a strong adoption in Snowflake AI/ML features.

Cortex REST API:

To make low-latency inference calls to Cortex AI from services or applications outside Snowflake, developers can simply use the REST API interface. Here is an example of what that looks like:

curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <snowflake_token>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "openai-gpt-5",
   "messages": [
      {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "Churn increased in Q2. Based on the notes below, summarize the top reasons"
      }
    ],
    "top_p": 0.8,
    "temperature": 0.2
  }' \
https://<account_identifier>.snowflakecomputing.com/api/v2/cortex/inference:complete

Cortex AI supports an OpenAI-compatible SDK, now in private preview, making it easy for developers to integrate GPT‑5 and other frontier models with minimal code changes.

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",
    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)

By aligning with the familiar OpenAI API structure, users can start running inference on Snowflake quickly—while seamlessly switching between leading models like GPT‑5 and other frontier models using a single, unified API surface. This reduces integration overhead and accelerates time to production. Reach out to your Snowflake account team for more information.

Looking ahead

Snowflake prioritizes security and privacy, and OpenAI is dedicated to building secure, reliable AI — creating strong alignment in delivering cutting-edge innovations. The GPT-5 model is now available within the secure Snowflake perimeter for use with Cortex AISQL functions and the REST API, and will be coming soon for Cortex Agents and Snowflake Intelligence.

Learn more

Download A Practical Guide to AI Agents.
Try out Snowflake Intelligence today.
Watch the demo to see Cortex AISQL in action.

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.