In 2013 AWS augmented its core cloud offering with the introduction of Redshift, a ‘data warehousing as a service’ solution. The Redshift solution bundled compute and storage, reducing the ability to meet individual customer needs to scale either component separately in a cost efficient manner. Not having the option to unbundle compute and storage was inconsistent with the flexible nature that cloud had become known for.
Snowflake’s solution separated storage, compute, and services into separate layers, allowing them to scale independently and achieve greater cost efficiencies. By offering flexibility it was able to better address the requirements of a wider range of customers - who had previously been limited to the more restrictive bundled options, like Redshift.
It does appear that at the initial, resource intensive stages of tech like NLP big tech is primed to pave the way. We saw this happen across cloud, AI more generally, storage etc. But big tech then begins focusing on making the tech accessible to industry value chains (Azure, AWS, Amazon's AI services etc.). But as the industry matures there's more room for specialized startups/companies to enter the space to capture lucrative niches - thats exactly what Snowflake did for Cloud.
Definitely see this kind of scale as a step toward a more robust, mature industry if anything. Better it move forward than not.