Snowflake, BlackRock Partnership

Giant asset management firm BlackRock is forging a partnership with Snowflake to combine BlackRock’s Aladdin investment technology with Snowflake’s Data Cloud technology.

This combination will provide Snowflake with the much-needed boost in the investment management industry. The partnership will lead to the creation of Aladdin Data Cloud, a Snowflake powered investment platform.

According to the two companies, the partnership will combine Aladdin and non-Aladdin data to enable developers to access it via Aladdin Studio. The Aladdin platform includes operating system services for wealth management, risk management, sustainable investing and accounting.

“BlackRock is partnering with Snowflake to power Aladdin Data Cloud because Snowflake’s robust technology platform provides near-unlimited scale, concurrency, and performance,” Snowflake wrote on its website. “The powerful capabilities of Snowflake’s Data Cloud will enable Aladdin clients to supercharge their use of data across their organization by enabling them to align their investments data strategy with their broader cloud and data strategy.”

Managing Director and Global Head of Aladdin Business at BlackRock, Sudhir Nair said Aladdin’s operating system service attends to money managements. “Managing money is an information processing exercise.”

Nair said there as more than 200 Aladdin third-party users; although BlackRock is the biggest user. Out of the 200 third-party users, about half of them make use of Aladdin’s end-to-end while the other half use the platform for system risk management.

Under the new collaboration, Aladdin Data Cloud users will each receive an independent centrally managed data store which will be preloaded with Aladdin data sets. These data sets can be supplemented by both proprietary and third-party data sources.

Due to increased demand in third-party data connections, Nair said Aladdin has been opening its platform with APIs, over the years, to satisfy the “insatiable desire to interact with data.” The collaboration with Snowflake meets this demand. Although Aladdin also does a lot of data connections, Snowflake will enable customers to bring in their own data sets, curate them, and mix and match with third-party sources.

Chief executive of Snowflake, Frank Slootman said the company’s goal is “to create a new industry standard in financial services for accessing, governing and acting on data in unified and secure data environment.”

Head of Finance Strategy at Snowflake, Matt Glickman also said the combination of Aladdin and Snowflake services plays a major role in the evolution of investment trade. “More and more people can trade portfolios and write Python code.” He added that “the aim is to enable users to assemble and build services together.”

In addition, the Snowflake powered Aladdin Data Cloud hopes to free up investment professionals and technology teams to enable them focus on more value-added activities. Taking out the technical complexity and operational burdens will offer simple-to-manage access control and enhance flexible customization.

BlackRock and Snowflake’s ultimate goal is to provide investment managers with a strategic solution that can help them unlock the value of data across their business ecosystems, geography, and subsidiaries.

“We’re thrilled to be a strategic partner to BlackRock to power a robust data platform for investment managers,” said Slootman. “With Aladdin as a strategic part of Snowflake Data Cloud, our goal is to create a new industry standard in financial services for access, governing and acting on data in a unified and secure data environment.”