Highlights:

  • The Information’s latest report quotes insiders. Neeva’s technology might help Snowflake create AI-powered search capabilities to help customers find information in internal documents and data.
  • Snowflake may face opposition if it attempts to acquire Neeva, however. According to The Information, Neeva has also approached Snowflake’s competitor Databricks Inc. regarding a potential acquisition.

The cloud-based data warehouse provider, Snowflake Inc., is reportedly negotiating to acquire Neeva Inc., a search startup founded by former Google LLC advertising executive Sridhar Ramaswamy.

The latest report is published by The Information, citing sources with direct knowledge of the discussions. It is stated that Neeva’s technology could assist Snowflake in developing search capabilities enabled by artificial intelligence that would help its customers locate information in internal documents and data.

Neeva was founded in 2019, but it first gained notoriety in June 2021, when it introduced a novel subscription-based search engine that intended to provide a superior user experience to Google by removing advertisements from its results. Neeva has recently expanded its search capabilities to answer more abstract queries using generative AI, comparable to OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot renowned for its human-like responses to queries and prompts. Moreover, it can generate new content based on user feedback. Its capabilities benefit search, where users frequently have abstract notions of what they’re searching for.

Neeva’s generative AI comes into the picture when Google cannot respond appropriately. It claims to be superior to ChatGPT, which was trained on publicly accessible internet data as of 2021 and is, therefore, obsolete. Neeva’s AI can search the internet as it exists today, allowing it to yield more relevant and current results. Instead of producing a list of links to various websites in its results, Neeva aims to provide summarized answers with embedded citations, making it more akin to a real-time encyclopedia search.

The model auto-updates regularly, allowing it to retrieve the most recent information from the Internet. Nonetheless, if it cannot provide a summary in response to a user’s query, it can also return a traditional list of search results.

Neeva, valued at approximately USD 250 million during its most recent funding round in 2021, would be an excellent match for Snowflake. It is rumored that the cloud data warehouse giant is eager to incorporate generative AI into its offerings, as it can increase user productivity by decreasing the amount of time spent seeking information within documents. Snowflake is currently at a disadvantage, as competitors such as Google Cloud and Microsoft Corp. offer access to AI software with search functionality.

Dave Vellante, a longtime industry analyst, said Snowflake has ambitions to become the “App Store for data apps.” Neeva’s large language model capabilities and vector database would therefore enable Snowflake to simplify data application development.

Dave Vellante said, “Our fundamental research premise is that applications are moving from being process-centric to data-centric where logic is embedded in the data, not the other way around. A capability like this enables Snowflake and its partners to quickly and simply build apps inside the Snowflake Data Cloud and essentially become the data App Store. And if Snowflake can enable data app developers to build apps more efficiently and quickly then it can tap the scale and innovation in hyperscale clouds to be the best platform on which to build data apps.”

John Furrier, the Co-founder of SiliconANGLE, stated that the rise of AI with new semantic layers, similar to what Neeva is developing, unleashes a transformative surge in the technology industry. He said, “By prioritizing data integration and embedding app logic, businesses can create automated systems that make decisions without human intervention. This paradigm shift revolutionizes business operations, enabling companies to achieve unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness.”

Snowflake may face opposition if it attempts to acquire Neeva, however. According to The Information, Neeva has also approached Snowflake’s competitor Databricks Inc. regarding a potential acquisition.