AI is Here, and It’s Deeply Embedded in Your Data Stack
Snowflake Summit 2025 just wrapped, and the message couldn’t be clearer: AI isn’t just a feature—it’s now part of the foundation. This year’s event unveiled a bold vision for what they’re calling the AI Data Cloud. Here are the top takeaways worth knowing, especially if you’re building in data, cloud, or analytics.
1. Snowflake Intelligence: Meet Your New AI Copilot
The star of the show was Snowflake Intelligence, a conversational AI assistant embedded directly in your Snowflake workspace. Think ChatGPT, but for your actual data—complete with access control and governance built in. You can query, analyze, and even automate workflows in plain English. It’s a power boost for analysts, ops teams, and developers alike.
Also unveiled:
- Cortex AI in SQL: Snowflake is making GenAI native to SQL. Functions like AI_GENERATE, AI_CLASSIFY, and AI_PREDICT are now built into your queries, making it easier to apply LLMs to text, audio, image, or tabular data.
- Cortex Agents: New “agents” can automate everything from running pipelines to fine-tuning models—drawing on OpenAI, Anthropic, and others under the hood.
2. Adaptive Compute: Speed and Savings
Snowflake announced Adaptive Compute, which automatically scales and routes workloads across optimized compute pools. Add in the Generation 2 Warehouses—which reportedly deliver up to 2.1× faster performance—and the days of overprovisioning and manual tuning might finally be numbered.
3. Seamless Ingestion + Data Governance
Data flow and control got a serious upgrade:
- Openflow (built on Apache NiFi) now makes it easy to ingest structured and unstructured data from places like Slack, ServiceNow, and Box.
- Apache Iceberg is now REST-compatible!
- Horizon Catalog Enhancements: Unified search across internal and external databases (even Postgres and MySQL), better metadata governance, role-based security, and immutable snapshots for compliance-heavy environments.
4. Native Apps, Composable Platforms & Developer Love
Snowflake continues leaning into its identity as a full-stack developer platform:
- dentsu’s Composable Platform made waves. Built on Snowflake Native Apps, it represents a major leap forward in how applications are architected. This platform is zero-share, cloud-agnostic, and globally available—offering an ecosystem of modular, composable products that can be rapidly integrated without compromising data control.
- Snowpark Container Services now supports GCP and Azure, giving dev teams more control and flexibility across hybrid environments.
- dbt + Terraform + Git Integration: CI/CD for data is real and getting better.
- Native App Framework is expanding fast, now supporting agentic apps from partners like Associated Press and Stack Overflow.
5. Smarter FinOps and Tighter Security
- FinOps Tools: You can now use anomaly detection to flag unusual costs, set tag-based budgets, and explore detailed workload insights.
- Security Upgrades: MFA everywhere, passkey login, dark web credential monitoring, and secure LLM interactions via role-based controls.
Final Thoughts
The Snowflake Summit 2025 announcements reflect a shift happening across the industry: AI is no longer just an add-on. It’s being woven directly into cloud data infrastructure, developer workflows, and enterprise operations.