Snowflake expands Seoul office, signaling intensified push into Korea market

Snowflake, the U.S.-based data cloud company focused on AI-enabled analytics, held a media session in Seoul to mark the relocation and expansion of its Seoul office in Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam District. The event signals an intensified push by the company into the Korean market.

At the session, Snowflake Korea’s head, Choi Ki-Young, outlined how the platform supports fast innovation by turning data into actionable value for businesses. The company’s executives described Snowflake as an AI data cloud designed to help enterprises build data, applications, and AI-driven capabilities more efficiently.

Snowflake highlighted its global footprint, noting that more than 12,600 organizations worldwide rely on its platform. The company reported strong, sustained growth with annual revenue reaching about 7 trillion won, and that its Korea branch was established in 2021 as part of a longer-term expansion plan.

In Korea, Snowflake says it serves a large share of the market’s major players. Choi stated that roughly 80% of Korea’s top 10 conglomerates are among its customers, and he pointed to a portfolio that includes a wide range of domestic firms across sectors such as electronics, telecommunications, automotive, consumer goods, media, finance, and more. Notable names cited included Samsung, LG Uplus, LG Chem, Lotte, Pulmuone, Hyundai Home Shopping, Nexon, Kakao Games, CJ Fresh Way, CJ Foodville, Kyobo Book Centre, MBC, Amorepacific, POSCO, Neowiz, and others.

Snowflake argues that its platform unifies data silos across departments, enabling integrated analysis of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. A key feature is cross-region data storage that connects data housed in multiple locations into a single AI-ready environment. The company also emphasizes automated data management, scalability across architectures, and the ability to connect with on-premises data for hybrid deployments.

Director Im Jin-seok of Snowflake Korea described the product as accessible beyond data scientists and analysts, noting that users can interact with data using natural language rather than SQL. He said the goal is to make the platform usable by a broad range of employees with minimal specialized training.

For U.S. readers, the Korea push matters because it illustrates how rapidly AI-enabled data platforms are being adopted by Asia’s tech and manufacturing giants. Korea’s aggressive corporate digitization, tight data privacy and security considerations, and heavy reliance on data-driven decision-making create a substantial demand signal for global cloud and analytics providers like Snowflake. The Korea expansion also suggests potential for stronger U.S.–Korean collaboration in cloud, AI, and data infrastructure, with implications for supply chains, competition among cloud players, and cross-border data workflows in a major East Asian market.