# Open Semantic Interchange launches to standardize business definitions

> Snowflake, Salesforce, dbt Labs, RelationalAI and other companies announced the Open Semantic Interchange, an effort to create a vendor-neutral format for semantic definitions.

By Brandon Gross. Published September 25, 2025.  
Tags: standards, semantics, snowflake.  
Canonical: https://kenseme.com/blog/open-semantic-interchange-announced/

A metric defined in three tools is three metrics. On September 23, 2025, a group of data and analytics companies announced a shared format meant to fix that: the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI).

## What was announced

1. **A shared format for semantic definitions**, so metrics, dimensions and relationships can move between tools without being rewritten.
2. **Led by Snowflake, Salesforce, dbt Labs and RelationalAI**, with 17 founding members in total.
3. **Open and vendor-neutral** by intent, with a specification to follow.

## Why it matters

Every BI tool, warehouse and agent platform has its own way of recording what a metric means, and the copies drift. A common format will not make them agree on its own, but it makes one source of truth possible.

A file that moves cleanly between tools carries whatever was decided, right or wrong. If two teams disagree about what counts as revenue, OSI will carry the disagreement faithfully.

## Sources

1. [Open Semantic Interchange initiative (Snowflake press release)](https://www.snowflake.com/en/news/press-releases/snowflake-salesforce-dbt-labs-and-more-revolutionize-data-readiness-for-ai-with-open-semantic-interchange-initiative/)
2. [Open Semantic Interchange (Snowflake Blog)](https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/open-semantic-interchange-ai-standard/)