Snowflake acquires Neeva to add generative AI-based search to Data Cloud

Cloud-based data warehouse company Snowflake on Wednesday said that it was acquiring Neeva, a startup based in Mountain View, California, for an undisclosed sum in an effort to add generative AI-based search to its Data Cloud platform.

“Snowflake is acquiring Neeva, a search company founded to make search even more intelligent at scale. Neeva created a unique and transformative search experience that leverages generative AI and other innovations to allow users to query and discover data in new ways,” Snowflake co-founder Benoit Dageville said in a blog post.

“Search is fundamental to how businesses interact with data, and the search experience is evolving rapidly with new conversational paradigms emerging in the way we ask questions and retrieve information, enabled by generative AI. The ability for teams to discover precisely the right data point, data asset, or data insight is critical to maximizing the value of data,” Dageville added.

Snowflake has been on an acquisition spree lately, with the company acquiring LeapYear in February to boost its data clean room abilties.

The LeapYear acquisition came just a month after Snowflake agreed to purchase artificial intelligence-based time series forecasting platform provider Myst AI, taking the company’s acquisition count to seven companies in three years.

In August 2022 it bought AI-based document analysis platform Applica, based in Poland, to help enterprises handle unstructured data.

Other acquisitions included Streamlit (March 2022), Polish custom software company Pragmatists (January 2022), Polish digital products development studio Polidea (February 2021), and Canadian data anonymization company CryptoNumerics (July 2020).

Neeva, which has raised over $77 million in funding till date from firms such as Greylock and Sequoia, was founded in 2019 by Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan.