Harsha Kapre, director at Snowflake Ventures, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2026 Powerlist.
It has been nearly six years since Stefan Williams established AI data cloud company Snowflake’s corporate VC, Snowflake Ventures, one of the most active units in enterprise software this past year.
The unit is now led by Harsha Kapre who joined Snowflake in 2017 as a senior product manager where he “played a pivotal role in Snowflake’s partner ecosystem expansion”, the company said. Prior to Snowflake, he spent 18 years at IBM in various data roles.
Snowflake Ventures significantly accelerated its investment activity in late 2025 and early 2026, completing nearly 25 deals with a strong focus on AI, agentic AI, and companies building on the AI data cloud ecosystem. Representative investments include Aira Technologies, which is advancing AI agents for telecom operations, and Bedrock Data, whose governance platform is designed to enable and scale enterprise AI use cases.
As of early 2026, the firm has made over 60 total investments. That expanded commitment has been reinforced by a strong run of outcomes. Since the start of 2025, Snowflake Ventures has seen multiple portfolio companies reach successful exits, including Neon, Veza and Observe – which Snowflake acquired earlier this year.
Further, Snowflake committed $200m to its startup accelerator in February last year, three years after its launch. The accelerator provides technical support through native platform features like Snowflake Cortex AI, cloud credits and go-to-market partnerships for promising AI startups. Partners in the programme include fellow CVC units Capital One Ventures and NTTVC.
Kapre’s broader view of the market centres on helping customers realise tangible outcomes from AI by supporting the next generation of startups building alongside and deeply integrating with Snowflake’s platform.
After the hype cycle of 2025’s “year of the agents”, he said enterprises were becoming more disciplined and choosing AI tools that deliver measurable outcomes rather than novelty. Snowflake Ventures is aligning accordingly, backing companies that tie directly to return on investment, governance and real-world impact.
In that sense, Snowflake Ventures is evolving from a strategic accessory into a competitive weapon and one that extends Snowflake’s platform not just by acquisition, but by orchestrating an ecosystem of startups building its future from the outside in.
The GCV Powerlist represents the 100 individuals spearheading the future of the corporate venturing industry.
These individuals excel in terms of their venturing approach and structure, number and quality of portfolio companies and in their contributions to the corporate venturing profession.
Here’s a snapshot of their recent deals:
