It Took 31 Vendors To Agree On What Revenue Means

In September 2025, Snowflake, Salesforce, dbt Labs, BlackRock and a dozen others launched the Open Semantic Interchange, an open standard so every tool 'speaks the same language' about metrics. By January 2026 the working group had reached 31 organizations.

On September 23, 2025, Snowflake announced the Open Semantic Interchange with Salesforce, dbt Labs, RelationalAI, BlackRock and others, pitched as a vendor-neutral YAML standard for metrics, dimensions and joins. The stated diagnosis: 'every tool interprets business metrics and metadata differently.' The working group held its first in-person meeting in October across two offices, and by January 2026 had grown to 31 organizations with a finalized specification.

It matters because the framing locates the problem in the file format, where competitors can cooperate, rather than in the org chart, where they cannot. A shared YAML schema is a genuine convenience: it lets your BI tool and your warehouse read the same definition file without a translation layer. That is real plumbing, and plumbing is good. It is also the easy half.

What it reveals is that interoperability and agreement are different problems wearing the same coat. The standard guarantees that Marketing and Finance can now write 'revenue' in identical syntax. It does not adjudicate whether revenue includes refunds, recognizes annual contracts monthly, or counts the trial that converted on the 31st. Thirty-one vendors can ratify the container. The number inside it is still decided in a room, by people, with stakes.

Watch what happens after the spec ships: whether anyone is named to own each definition, or whether 'OSI-compliant' becomes a badge for dashboards that disagree fluently in the same format. The tell is a glossary entry with a schema version and no human next to it. A standard moves the argument; it does not end it.