{"slug": "openai-gpt-5-6-on-snowflake-cortex-ai", "title": "OpenAI GPT 5.6 on Snowflake Cortex AI", "summary": "OpenAI and Snowflake announced the private preview of OpenAI GPT 5.6 on Snowflake Cortex AI, making the latest frontier model available within Snowflake's secure perimeter for enterprise use. The GPT 5.6 series includes Sol, Terra, and Luna models, offering improvements in coding, reasoning, and cost efficiency, and enabling AI-powered coding agents, personal work agents, and data analysis via Cortex AI Functions.", "body_md": "We are thrilled to announce the private preview availability of OpenAI GPT 5.6, OpenAI's latest model, on [Snowflake Cortex AI](https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/features/cortex/). As a launch partner with OpenAI, we're providing same-day availability of OpenAI GPT 5.6 in private preview. It is available within the secure Snowflake perimeter for use with [Snowflake Cortex AI Functions](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/aisql) and [Cortex REST API](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/cortex-llm-rest-api) and coming soon for [Snowflake CoCo](https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/features/cortex-code/) and [Snowflake CoWork](https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/snowflake-intelligence/).\n\n## OpenAI GPT 5.6\n\nGPT-5.6 is OpenAI's most capable series of frontier models to date, providing notable improvements in agentic coding, computer use, and knowledge work. GPT 5.6 Sol is OpenAI’s strongest model yet bringing improved capabilities in coding, biology and cybersecurity. Terra, a balanced model for everyday work; and Luna, a fast and affordable model. Terra has competitive performance compared to GPT‑5.5 while being [2x cheaper](https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/) and Luna brings strong capability at a lower cost.\n\n*Source: OpenAI, Jul 9, 2026*\n\n## What you can do with OpenAI GPT 5.6 on Snowflake\n\nThe GPT 5.6 models join other leading frontier models in Snowflake Cortex AI, enabling a wide range of enterprise use cases, all within Snowflake’s perimeter. With GPT 5.6, you can:\n\n**Speed up development with**: Snowflake’s AI coding agent understands your enterprise data, governance policies and workflows, enabling teams to go from idea to production quickly without breaking trust or impacting scale. Now, with GPT-5.6, CoCo enables improved reasoning, code generation, support for more complex, long-running tasks and agentic execution, bringing secure, Snowflake-aware assistance directly into Snowsight interface, the CLI and local dev tools. For data engineers, analysts and builders, it turns natural language into production-ready pipelines, analytics and AI agents — collapsing weeks of glue work into minutes, while staying governed, interoperable and enterprise-grade. You can try OpenAI GPT-5.6 in private preview using /model command within the CLI:[CoCo](https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/features/cortex-code/)\n\n**Build personal work agents:**[Snowflake CoWork](https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/snowflake-intelligence-work-agent/)introduces a new category of agents designed to transform how organizations work, collaborate and innovate by fostering a truly data-driven culture. Every employee, regardless of technical depth, can ask complex questions in natural language, uncover the \"why\" behind every \"what\" and take confident action, all within Snowflake's secure and governed perimeter. For developers, admins and builders, GPT-5.6 will extend this foundation, enabling the creation of advanced agents that reason across complex data, write and execute code with greater autonomy and orchestrate analytical and operational workflows.\n\nSnowflake CoWork: A personal work agent for every knowledge worker.\n\n**Analyze structured and unstructured data with unparalleled precision:**[Cortex AI Functions](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/llm-functions)make it easy to build scalable AI pipelines across multimodal enterprise data using SQL. Cortex AI Functions offer high-performance processing at a lower cost than manually orchestrated AI pipelines, enabling trusted insights across the enterprise while maintaining the security and governance capabilities Snowflake is known for. For example, with the AI_COMPLETE function, analysts can apply natural language instructions directly in SQL, leveraging models such as GPT 5.6 Luna.\n\n```\nSELECT AI_COMPLETE(\n  'openai-gpt-5-6-luna',\n  PROMPT('Review the following financial filing and summarize key revenue trends, margin changes, and any notable risk factors mentioned: {0}', my_table.filing)) FROM my_table\n```\n\n**Developers can build AI applications closer to their secure data:** Use the[Cortex REST API](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/cortex-llm-rest-api)to build agentic enterprise applications within the Snowflake security perimeter. They can leverage new capabilities such as GPT-5.6’s adjustable effort levels, enabling the model to balance reasoning depth and latency on a task. Developers can get started quickly using the OpenAI SDK by pointing it to their Snowflake Cortex REST API endpoint, enabling a seamless integration with familiar Anthropic tooling.\n\n``` python\nfrom openai import OpenAI\n\nclient = OpenAI(\n    api_key=\"<SNOWFLAKE_PAT>\",\n    base_url=\"https://<account-identifier>.snowflakecomputing.com/api/v1/openai\"\n)\nresponse = client.chat.completions.create(\n    model=\"openai-gpt-5-6-sol\",\n    messages=[\n        {\n            \"role\": \"system\",\n            \"content\": \"You are a helpful business analyst\"\n        },\n        {\n            \"role\": \"user\",\n            \"content\": \n                \"Sales are down 18% in Q2. We had lower ad spend and reduced campaign performance in APAC. Can you analyze the image below to examine the cause?\"\n        },\n        {\n            \"type\": \"image_url\",\n            \"image_url\": {\n                \"url\": \"<base64 url>\"\n            }\n        }\n    ]\n)\nprint(response.choices[0].message)\n```\n\nMoving agentic AI from concept production is now a strategic imperative. Powered by OpenAI's GPT 5.6, agents can handle complex, long-running tasks with greater consistency and reduced supervision, driving real work forward at scale. With multiple entry points from [CoCo CLI](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/cortex-code/cortex-code-cli) to [CoWork](https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/snowflake-intelligence/), [Cortex AI Functions](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/llm-functions) and [REST APIs](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/snowflake-cortex/cortex-rest-api), customers can easily adopt this capability and accelerate their path to high-impact, production-ready agentic AI at scale.\n\n## Learn more\n\nRead our latest announcement for\n\n[CoCo](https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/snowflake-coco-ai-coding-agent-modern-data-stack/), and learn more about it[here](https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/features/cortex-code/).Read more about the latest\n\n[CoWork innovations](https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/snowflake-cowork-personal-work-agent/)and[click here](https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/snowflake-intelligence/)to learn more.Get Started with MCP Connectors in CoWork\n\n[using this guide](https://www.snowflake.com/en/developers/guides/sfguide-getting-started-with-mcp-connectors/).\n\n**Forward-looking statements**\n\nThis article contains forward-looking statements, including about our future product offerings, and are not commitments to deliver any product offerings. Actual results and offerings may differ and are subject to known and unknown risk and uncertainties. See our latest 10-Q for more information.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-gpt-5-6-on-snowflake-cortex-ai", "canonical_source": "https://www.snowflake.com/content/snowflake-site/global/en/blog/openai-gpt-5-6-snowflake-cortex-ai", "published_at": "2026-07-09 17:19:49+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-09 19:45:14.112839+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-products", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "Snowflake", "GPT 5.6", "Snowflake Cortex AI", "CoCo", "CoWork", "Sol", "Terra"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-gpt-5-6-on-snowflake-cortex-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-gpt-5-6-on-snowflake-cortex-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-gpt-5-6-on-snowflake-cortex-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-gpt-5-6-on-snowflake-cortex-ai.jsonld"}}