Snowflake Stock Rides on Cortex AI Adoption: Can the Growth Continue?

Snowflake’s SNOW Cortex platform is gaining momentum as enterprises accelerate investments in AI-native applications. Cortex is reported under Snowflake’s product revenue and is a key catalyst driving platform growth. Product revenues were $996.8 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, up 26% year over year. The figure beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 6.71%.

Cortex is designed to support both internal workflows and customer-facing applications. The platform lets users build AI tools using plain language, pull answers from company data and set up simple automation to respond to queries. It is built to help teams work more efficiently with AI inside Snowflake’s secure environment.

Steady platform enhancements are driving momentum in Cortex. Cortex AISQL enables users to query enterprise data using natural language, while Knowledge Extensions allow organizations to ground large language models in company-specific context. Cortex access to foundation models like Meta’s Llama 4 and OpenAI via Azure, giving teams flexibility to build custom AI applications without moving data outside Snowflake.

The additions and enhancements are gaining traction among enterprise teams. Kraft Heinz is leveraging Cortex Agent to automate internal workflows and reduce response times, reflecting rising demand for in-platform AI assistants. Luminate Data is using Cortex to improve retail analytics for its clients, implying platform versatility across verticals. Cortex surpassed 5,200 weekly active accounts during the reported quarter, underlining growing usage as enterprises expand AI adoption within Snowflake’s ecosystem.

Snowflake Faces Competition

Snowflake’s Cortex platform is facing growing competition from C3.ai AI and ServiceNow NOW, both of which are expanding their presence in the enterprise AI assistant space.

C3.ai continues to enhance its Generative AI Suite, offering domain-specific copilots and workflow tools tailored to industries like defense, manufacturing and energy. With a strong focus on retrieval-augmented generation and model flexibility, C3.ai  is increasingly competing with Cortex on enterprise-grade AI applications.

ServiceNow is also gaining traction through Now Assist, embedding generative AI across IT, HR and customer support. As ServiceNow scales Now Assist across industries, the platform directly overlaps with Snowflake’s Cortex vision for enterprise productivity.

SNOW’s Share Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Snowflake shares have appreciated 46.2% year to date, outperforming the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector’s return of 7.9% and the Zacks Internet Software industry’s increase of 16.1%.

SNOW's YTD Price Performance

Snowflake stock is trading at a premium, with a forward 12-month Price/Sales of 15.22X compared with the industry’s 5.85X. SNOW has a Value score of F.

SNOW's Valuation

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SNOW’s fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $1.06 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days. The figure indicates a 27.71% increase year over year. 

Snowflake Inc. Price and Consensus

Snowflake Inc. price-consensus-chart | Snowflake Inc. Quote

Snowflake currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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