Snowflake boosts AI capabilities with new tools and Crunchy Data acquisition

Snowflake announced a series of AI-focused product updates during its annual Snowflake Summit, including new tools designed to fuel enterprise adoption of agentic AI. The updates came alongside the company's acquisition of PostgreSQL startup Crunchy Data, a move aimed at strengthening its AI compliance and scaling capabilities.

Key Announcements

• Snowflake Openflow: A hybrid multicloud data ingestion service to improve data interoperability.
• Cortex Knowledge Extensions: A third-party data mining pipeline for AI apps, featuring integrations with publishers like The Associated Press and USA Today.
• Snowflake Intelligence and Data Science Agent: AI-powered analytics and data science assistants leveraging Anthropic and OpenAI models.
• Cortex AISQL: A general availability release of Snowflake’s agentic querying tool.
• SnowConvert AI: A copilot for migrating legacy data warehouses.

CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy emphasized the company’s focus on simplifying access to both structured and unstructured data, calling it a "strong foundation" for the era of agentic AI. The Crunchy Data acquisition follows Databricks' recent purchase of PostgreSQL startup Neon, highlighting the competitive race in the AI data cloud space.

Integrations and Partnerships

Snowflake also announced integrations with platforms like Google Drive, Salesforce Data Cloud, and Workday, ensuring unified security and governance policies. These integrations will soon enter public preview.

During a keynote conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Ramaswamy and Altman discussed the transformative potential of AI in business. Altman predicted that AI systems will soon tackle complex business problems beyond human capability.

For more details, visit Snowflake's blog or Databricks' announcement.