Snowflake unveils new AI platform to simplify data use

Snowflake has unveiled Snowflake Intelligence, a new platform designed to simplify the process of asking business questions and creating data agents for enterprises.

Snowflake Intelligence is expected to enable users to interact with enterprise data more intuitively by leveraging Snowflake's existing AI services. The platform aims to provide teams with the tools to create data agents that use enterprise-grade data to drive organisational work efficiently while protecting customer intellectual property (IP).

By facilitating seamless connectivity to third-party tools, Snowflake Intelligence allows users to engage with a variety of data types—from sales transactions and documents to productivity tools like Slack and Google Workspace—all through natural language interactions. The platform also supports API calls to facilitate actions and data modifications for business improvements.

Baris Gultekin, Head of AI at Snowflake, noted the impact of this development, stating, "With Snowflake Intelligence, teams can easily create data agents that allow business users to talk to their enterprise data using natural language, and then analyse, summarise, and take action on those results from one unified platform. Snowflake Intelligence represents the next step in Snowflake's AI journey, further enabling teams to easily, and safely, advance their businesses with data-driven insights they can act on to deliver measurable impact."

Snowflake Intelligence addresses the common challenges faced by organisations, such as fragmented data governance, infrastructure silos, and limited analytic access. It aims to unify various data systems under a single governance layer to enhance data accessibility and decision-making capabilities by employing both unstructured and structured data.

The platform's functionality allows users to specify datasets for inquiries, including PDFs and database tables, without requiring coding skills. Data agents within the platform can perform analytical tasks and utilise APIs to document business decisions, simplifying outcome tracking and impact measurement.

Snowflake Intelligence is powered by Snowflake Cortex AI, a managed AI service offering generative AI features, and utilises Cortex Search and Cortex Analyst for processing unstructured and structured data, respectively. These tools enable the efficient use of large language models and other AI functionalities, facilitating quicker app development for enterprises.

Additionally, Snowflake Intelligence is integrated with the Snowflake Horizon Catalog, supporting open formats such as Apache Iceberg and Apache Polaris, which enhances compliance, security, and privacy across various operational environments. This integration is aimed to assist organisations in achieving secure and governed AI at scale without extensive security implementations.

Snowflake is focused on making enterprise AI easy, efficient and trusted. Many companies around the globe, including hundreds of the world's largest, use Snowflake's AI Data Cloud to share data, build applications, and power their business with AI.