Snowflake Research Reveals that 92% of Early Adopters See ROI From AI Investments

No-Headquarters/BOZEMAN, Mont.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 15, 2025--

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the AI Data Cloud company, in collaboration with Enterprise Strategy Group, today released the “ Radical ROI of Generative AI,” a global research report surveying 1,900 business and IT leaders across nine different countries — all of whom are actively using AI for one or more use cases. Of all respondents, 92% reported that their AI investments are already paying for themselves, and 98% plan to invest more on AI in 2025. As AI adoption accelerates across global enterprises, a robust data foundation has emerged as the cornerstone of successful implementation, yet respondents are still grappling with how to make their data AI-ready.

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“I’ve spent almost two decades of my career developing AI, and we’ve finally reached the tipping point where AI is creating real, tangible value for enterprises across the globe,” said Baris Gultekin, Head of AI, Snowflake. “With over 4,000 customers using Snowflake for AI and ML on a weekly basis, I routinely see the outsized impact these tools have in driving greater efficiency and productivity for teams, and democratizing data insights across entire organizations.”

Businesses Report Varying Levels of AI Success Across the Globe

Early AI investments are proving to be successful for the majority of enterprises, with 93% indicating that their AI initiatives have been very or mostly successful. In fact, two-thirds of respondents are already starting to quantify their generative AI ROI today, finding that for every dollar spent, they are seeing $1.41 in returns (or 41% ROI) through cost savings and increased revenue.

However, there are global nuances around where organizations are focusing their AI efforts that directly correlate to each country's AI maturity, and their results in terms of driving ROI across regions:

Organizations Face Increased Pressure to Select the Right Use Cases

Despite almost all respondents reporting success with their AI initiatives to-date, many organizations are grappling with difficult decisions to build on the momentum. Amid a sea of opportunities to implement AI within their businesses, respondents reported challenges with identifying the most impactful use cases and increased pressure to make the right decisions — all while grappling with limited resources:

Overcoming Data Barriers to Maximize AI Effectiveness

Organizations are increasingly incorporating their proprietary data to maximize AI’s effectiveness, with 80% of respondents choosing to fine-tune models with their own data. Despite this widespread recognition of data's importance — with 71% of respondents acknowledging that effective model training and fine-tuning requires multi-terabytes of data — significant challenges persist in making this data AI-ready. With the majority struggling to make use of their most valuable asset, organizations claim that the following are the biggest data hurdles for driving AI success:

There is a significant opportunity for businesses to overcome these challenges and unlock the full potential of their data for more accurate, relevant, and impactful AI outcomes with a unified data platform.

"The rapid pace of AI is only accelerating the need for organizations to consolidate all of their data in a well-governed fashion," said Artin Avanes, Head of Core Data Platform, Snowflake. "Having an easy, connected, and trusted data platform like Snowflake is imperative not just for helping users see faster returns on their data investments, but it lays the foundation for users to easily scale their AI apps in a compliant and secure manner — without requiring specialized or hard to find technical skills. A managed, interoperable data platform provides seamless business continuity as global enterprises tap into their entire data estate to lead in the evolving AI landscape.”

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Methodology

Researchers from Enterprise Strategy Group identified, and conducted deeper research between Nov. 21, 2024, to Jan. 10, 2025, with early adopter organizations — those already augmenting and executing business processes in production, using commercial and open-source models rather than consumer-grade, subscription software such as ChatGPT. Of 3,324 respondents, 1,900 (57%) said they are using commercial or open source generative AI solutions. Additional details around methodology can be found within the report.

About Snowflake

Snowflake makes enterprise AI easy, efficient and trusted. More than 11,000 companies around the globe, including hundreds of the world’s largest, use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to share data, build applications, and power their business with AI. The era of enterprise AI is here. Learn more at snowflake.com (NYSE: SNOW).

Measuring the ROI of AI

Air traffic controllers in Denver lost communications with planes for 90 seconds earlier this week and had to scramble to use backup frequencies in the latest Federal Aviation Administration equipment failure.

The outage at a control facility that directs planes around Denver International Airport on Monday afternoon affected communications, not radar, the FAA's head of air traffic control, Frank McIntosh, said during a House hearing Thursday. This communications failure follows two high-profile outages of radar and communications in the past 2 1/2 weeks at a facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of the Newark, New Jersey, airport.

The FAA said in a statement that the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center lost communications for approximately 90 seconds. McIntosh said both the primary and main backup frequencies went down, so the controllers had to turn to an emergency frequency to communicate.

“Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots. Aircraft remained safely separated and there were no impacts to operations,” the FAA said.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California told McIntosh during the hearing that these outages are happening more regularly and it’s concerning every time.

“We know that there are staffing and equipment problems at air traffic control,” Garcia said. “We know that the problems have gone back decades in some cases, but it’s still an absolutely shocking system failure and we need immediate solutions.”

Last week, the Trump administration announced a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul an air traffic control system that relies on antiquated equipment. Air travel is safe even if the air traffic control system is old, but the problems in Newark were unacceptable and could have been prevented if the system had been upgraded sooner, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a Thursday op-ed in Newsweek.

The Newark airport has generally led the nation in flight cancellations and delays ever since both radar and communications went out on April 28 and again on May 9. A third similar problem happened Sunday, but that time the backup system worked and kept radar online.

“The safety of the traveling public cannot continue being put at risk,” Democrat and ranking member Rep. Rick Larsen said after the hearing. “Problems with our system have crossed administrations, but safety improvements cannot span generations. We need action now.”

The FAA and airlines that fly out of Newark met again Thursday to discuss cutting flights because there aren’t enough controllers to handle them all. More than 140 flights have been canceled at Newark Thursday.

Officials developed the plan to upgrade the air traffic control system after a deadly midair collision in January between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people in the skies over Washington, D.C. Several other crashes this year also put pressure on officials to act.

A United Airlines jetliner prepares to push off from a gate at Denver International Airport Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)