AI application "bull market narrative" strengthened again! AI frenzy ignites Snowflake's growth engine (SNOW.US) Wall Street quickly sends bullish research reports.

Leader in the field of cloud data warehousing, Snowflake (SNOW.US), is expected to continue its strong performance growth trend driven by the AI boom in the second half of its 2026 fiscal year. The company, with accelerated sales growth and momentum in its AI-driven strategy, has prompted Wall Street analysts to collectively raise their target stock prices and reaffirm a strong bullish rating. After announcing its second-quarter financial results and future performance outlook at the close of trading on Wednesday, Snowflake's stock price surged over 20% by the end of Thursday trading session, closing at $241. Year-to-date, under the unprecedented AI expansion globally, Snowflake's stock price has risen by 55%, outperforming the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indices. In terms of the latest financial report data, the explosive demand for Snowflake's cloud data warehousing and data analytics services has been driven by increased spending on AI infrastructure and AI application software by global enterprises and some government agencies. This growth has alleviated concerns in the market about the economic slowdown and potential market share impact from leading AI companies such as OpenAI on the performance of software vendors like Snowflake. Snowflake reported approximately $10.905 billion in product revenue for the second quarter, exceeding Wall Street's general expectation of $10.4 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 32%. Snowflake's second-quarter non-GAAP adjusted earnings per share were $0.35, nearly double the same period last year and higher than analysts' estimated $0.27. As of the end of July, Snowflake's net revenue retention rate was approximately 125%, reflecting not only increased purchases from existing customers and product stickiness but also strong evidence of revenue growth based on AI. The number of high-value customers for Snowflake continues to rise, with 654 customers already spending over $1 million in product consumption in the past 12 months, a 30% increase year-on-year. In terms of performance outlook, Snowflake expects third-quarter product revenue to be between $11.25 billion and $11.30 billion, higher than Wall Street's expected $11.2 billion, implying a year-on-year growth rate of 25% to 26%. Snowflake expects total revenue for the 2026 fiscal year to reach $43.95 billion, higher than Wall Street's expected $43.4 billion, indicating a potential year-on-year growth of 27%, revised up from the previous expectation of $43.3 billion. What is Snowflake? Snowflake is a company focused on cloud-native data warehousing and AI data services platform (their official theme is "AI Data Cloud"), with its core being a hosted, scalable cloud data warehouse/data platform that provides data storage, computing, governance, security, and sharing services. It is gradually incorporating AI/LLM (Large Language Models) capabilities native to its software platform (such as Cortex, Arctic, Native Apps, etc.). In terms of market perception and product form, Snowflake has always been seen as a benchmark in cloud data warehousing. The company started with cloud data warehousing/SQL analysis, emphasizing strong governance, data sharing, fully managed simplicity, but in recent years, it has expanded into AI-native data services with Cortex/Arctic/Polaris/Native Apps, and strengthened interoperability with Spark, Iceberg/Delta to capture more engineering/scientific workloads. Snowflake's "key position" in the field of artificial intelligence lies in the "data and governance layer + AI operations layer" and the "AI operation and access layer" in the AI data software technology stack. For example, Cortex (AISQL/Analyst, etc.) integrates AI large model calling, RAG/retrieval, unstructured analysis, evaluation, and observability into the platform's cloud-native experience; the Native App Framework allows third parties to distribute and monetize AI/ML applications directly as Snowflake cloud-native applications. The company's AI data services platform aims to "make data available on-site, bring AI closer to data, and ensure governance and compliance throughout," serving as the foundation for handling massive enterprise data and AI workloads. On Wall Street and in the industry, Databricks is generally considered Snowflake's top competitor. With a latest private valuation of around $100 billion and an incredibly strong revenue growth rate, Databricks outshines Snowflake, whose market value is approximately $80 billion even after a more than 20% surge in stock price on Thursday, leaving room for valuation growth compared to Databricks.