OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra Arrives on Snowflake Cortex AI in Private Preview

Snowflake said Sept. 9 that OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra is available in private preview through Snowflake Cortex AI. Snowflake says the release gives enterprise customers a way to use the model with data inside its security and governance perimeter.

The release adds another enterprise distribution channel for GPT-6 Astra. OpenAI introduced the model Sept. 3 and said it would become available through the OpenAI API, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Bedrock, without naming Snowflake. Microsoft made GPT-6 Astra generally available to all customers in Microsoft Foundry that same day, and AWS followed Sept. 8 with general availability on Amazon Bedrock. Snowflake’s Cortex AI rollout, by contrast, is a private preview rather than a general-availability launch.

Snowflake’s announcement identifies the model in Cortex AI as openai-gpt-6-astra. Customers can call it through the AI_COMPLETE function or a Cortex Inference endpoint compatible with the OpenAI SDK. Snowflake says the model works inside Snowflake CoCo, Snowflake CoWork, Cortex Agents, Cortex AI Functions and Cortex Inference, all within Snowflake’s security and governance perimeter.

The addition follows Snowflake’s Sept. 3 announcement that it was bringing Grok 4.6 to Cortex AI in public preview, another model-availability update for the platform.

Snowflake frames the release as a way for customers to query GPT-6 Astra close to enterprise data already governed inside the platform. That is Snowflake’s product claim: the announcement includes no independent performance benchmarks or customer-adoption figures for the Cortex AI integration.

The post does not identify which customers qualify for the private preview, provide a general-availability timeline, or disclose Snowflake-specific pricing or regional availability limits for GPT-6 Astra on Cortex AI.