Back from the Summit: A Data Superhero’s View on Snowflake 2025
From "just a database" to a Data & AI Platform — how far we’ve come, and why the Summit still feels like home.
I’m back home, recharging after my fifth (!) Snowflake Summit—and wow, what a ride it’s been. I still remember standing in the room back in 2019, listening to Benoit Dageville talk about the “Origin of Snowflake” when it really was “just a cloud database”. Fast forward to 2025, and we’re looking at a full-fledged Data & AI Platform that’s pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
But what struck me most is that, even with all this innovation, Snowflake’s original spirit is still alive and well: Easy. Efficient. Trusted. And this year’s Summit? No exception.
Data Superhero Networking Reception
After picking up my badge, I made my way to the Data Superhero Networking Reception at Movida SF—and wow, what a way to kick things off! 🙌 It was amazing to meet fellow Data Superheroes from all over the world, finally putting faces to Slack handles and LinkedIn profiles. There’s just something about being in a room full of Snowflake enthusiasts, builders, and problem-solvers who speak the same data language.
Big thanks to Amilee Alesna, Elsa Mayer, Daniel Myers, and the entire Snowflake crew for hosting such a warm and vibrant gathering. From deep tech chats to laughs over shared stories, this night really set the tone for the rest of Summit. Community vibes: 100%.
Snowflake Summit Day 1
“Empowering Industries with Simplicity, Innovation, and AI”
This year’s keynote was a masterclass in how Snowflake continues to reshape the enterprise data landscape—backed by customer stories, cutting-edge AI integration, and a bold vision for the future with OpenAI.
🎤 Opening Highlights
The Summit kicked off with a heartfelt welcome to the Snowflake community, emphasizing collaboration, innovation, and the transformative power of data + AI.
Real-world impact took center stage with stories from Caterpillar and AstraZeneca—showing how smarter data leads to real-time decisions and even better healthcare outcomes.
❄️ Snowflake’s Core: Simplicity & Scale
At the heart of Snowflake’s vision is simplicity—reducing friction, cutting complexity, and making the power of data accessible to everyone.
🧠 AI-Driven Everything
AI tools are now natively embedded in the platform, supporting real-time analytics, intuitive UI, and intelligent data agents.
Sam Altman (OpenAI) joined to highlight the future of AI and AGI—urging companies to experiment boldly and iterate fast.
Takeaway: LLMs are enterprise-ready, and AI is no longer just optional—it’s essential.
🏛️ Governance & Trust
With powerful governance features, Snowflake ensures data security, privacy, and trust—essential for industries like healthcare, finance, and defense.
NYSE’s Lynn Martin shared their journey: scaling from 315 billion to 1.2 trillion messages per day—with Snowflake as the backbone of trusted, transparent data.
🤖 AI Agents & the Road to AGI
We’re entering the age of intelligent agents: capable of reasoning, remembering, and taking action.
Altman reframed AGI not as a future date, but as exponential growth already underway.
🚀 Final Takeaways
Data + AI is now the default stack for innovation.
Simplicity is a feature, not a compromise.
Iterate boldly—AI rewards curiosity, speed, and good data foundations.
Snowflake Summit Day 2
Tuesday morning at Summit 2025 kicked off with a keynote that basically said: “Tell us what you want from your data platform… and we already built it.” From governing all your data to leveraging AI agents for real business impact, Snowflake brought receipts. Eleven (yes, eleven!) new announcements later, it’s safe to say the platform just leveled up—again. Here’s your cheat sheet.
🧠 Tuesday Keynote Recap: “All You Want, Now You Can”
This year’s Tuesday keynote zeroed in on the top wish list from enterprise data teams—and ticked off every box with new features and innovation:
“I want to have a future-proof data architecture”
“I want to get better economics”
“I want to govern all data”
“I want to integrate all types of data”
“I want to deliver more business impact”
“I want to get faster insights”
“I want to leverage AI with our data”
“I want to accelerate business growth with AI agents”
❄️ The answer? Snowflake’s unified, intelligent Data & AI Platform—still easy, connected, and trusted.
🚨 11 Must-Know Announcements from the Keynote
Snowflake Intelligence
Natural language + all your data = real insights. Ask questions, get answers fast.
AI-powered SQL
No more JOIN headaches. Let AI help you write clean, optimized SQL.
Data Science Agents
Accelerate ML workflows with built-in copilots.
Snowflake Openflow
Stream, batch, or move data however you want. No glue code needed.
dbt Projects in Snowflake
Yes, you can now edit, test, and run your dbt Core projects natively.
Workspaces
A one-stop UI to manage all your files, notebooks, and more.
🔗 Docs
Snowconvert AI
AI-assisted migrations from legacy systems straight into Snowflake.
Semantic Views
Make your structured data “AI-ready” with native semantic modeling.
🔗 Blog
Adaptive Compute
Let Snowflake auto-pick the right compute for your queries = better performance, lower cost.
🔗 More
Cortex Knowledge Extensions
Bring unstructured third-party data into your AI apps and assistants.
🔗 Details
Agents Marketplace
Find prebuilt, plug-and-play AI agents in Snowflake’s evolved marketplace.
💬 Wrap-Up
If you felt like Summit 2025 was Snowflake’s “AI coming out party,” Tuesday’s keynote confirmed it. Whether you’re coding in SQL, managing pipelines, or integrating AI agents, Snowflake now has a tool—or eleven—for that. Let’s just say the platform has never felt more complete. Let’s build. 💥
Snowflake Summit Day 3
“Empowering Builders with AI”
🎷 Builders, Jazz, and Agentic Apps: The Dev Keynote Recap You Need
If Tuesday was about what AI can do, then the Builders Keynote was all about who gets to build it—and spoiler: it’s you. Whether you’re slinging SQL, tinkering with Streamlit, or pushing ML into prod, this keynote put Snowflake’s evolving developer stack front and center. From Cortex-powered AI agents to real-time data flows, the vibe was clear: Snowflake wants to turn builders into superheroes.
Let’s break it down.
🔨 The Builder’s Toolbox: Key Announcements from Snowflake’s Dev Keynote
🔑 Major Themes
AI is no longer an add-on—it’s the heart of modern development.
Snowflake is building for builders: data pros, ML engineers, analysts.
Agentic systems, real-time streams, and open standards like Iceberg took the spotlight.
🚀 Product Announcements
Snowflake Intelligence: A new UI layer for deploying trustworthy AI agents—think smart copilots with guardrails.
Cortex Search API: Semantic search across documents, images, and even audio—powered by Snowflake’s own Arctic Embed model.
AI Agents in Action: Whoop showed off Cortex-based agents that retrieve insights from messy enterprise data—yes, even PDFs.
Streamlit in Snowflake: GA on AWS and Azure. Upload files, use your webcam, and build apps—no glue code required.
Snowflake Notebooks: GA across clouds. Now with custom runtimes and full-on ML capabilities.
Snowflake Workspaces: Your one-stop project hub—files, charts, dbt, copilots, SQL. All in one UI.
Open Standards: More love for Iceberg and Polaris catalog. Snowflake’s staying open, not locked in.
📡 Real-Time & Unstructured Data
Document AI: Extracts meaning from your PDFs, images, and more—automatically structured into Snowflake tables.
OpenFlow: Real-time streaming + transformation pipelines = AI-ready data on tap.
🧠 Inference Upgrades
Support for Claude 4, Mistral, Meta, and Snowflake Arctic.
Fast inference with speculative decoding and caching.
Bonus: Snowflake as a drop-in endpoint for OpenAI SDK.
🧪 Community Moves
SV AI Hub (Fall 2025): A massive collab space in Silicon Valley for Snowflake partners and AI devs.
Git & DevOps Upgrades: Private OAuth, custom repo URLs, token access—check.
🎷 Culture Vibes
They ended on a jazzy note—literally. Developers aren’t just coders, they’re improvisers, collaborators, explorers. So go build, riff, and shape the future of AI, one agentic system at a time.
Dev Day @ Snowflake Summit
”From Prototypes to Production”
If Dev Day had a motto, it would be: stop watching, start building. From Streamlit and Notebooks to autonomous agents and real-time pipelines, Snowflake made it clear—the future of data-native dev is already here. And it’s smarter, faster, and a whole lot more open.
At the heart of it all? A powerhouse conversation between Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy and AI legend Andrew Ng. It wasn’t just inspiring—it was a masterclass in how AI is transforming not just software, but who gets to build it. Think: open-source innovation, startup fuel, and tools anyone can pick up to prototype, test, and deploy meaningful AI.
🔍 Dev Day Highlights
🎙️ Sridhar Ramaswamy & Andrew Ng: AI for Everyone
A candid, wide-ranging chat that touched on AI’s rapid evolution, the rise of open developer tooling, and the importance of staying current in a fast-moving field. Ng summed it up best: learning how to “talk to AI” is the new coding.
🧠 Snowflake Intelligence
Built on Cortex, it lets you turn all your data—structured, unstructured, even audio—into insights. Think semantic models, trusted outputs, and AI copilots baked right into your workflows.
🔎 Cortex Search API
Powered by the open-source Arctic Embed model and Hugging Face. Semantic search, unstructured data, and AI-native performance all in one.
🤖 Agentic Applications
Agents can now do more than answer a prompt—they can choose tools, follow workflows, and stay accurate using built-in AI guardrails. A big leap toward enterprise-grade autonomy.
📚 Streamlit + Notebooks
Now GA across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Upload files, use audio input, and deploy production-ready MVPs in days, not months.
🔁 Snowflake Openflow
Your data’s new best friend. Ingest, transform, and route data across systems in real time. No glue code, just clean pipelines—and it doesn’t even need a warehouse running.
🗂️ Horizon Catalog
Discover data assets across silos with Universal Search, governance baked-in, and access-aware metadata exploration. Bonus: index external systems like Postgres and SQL Server too.
💥 Bottom Line: Dev Day proved it—Snowflake’s no longer “just a database.” It’s your new developer playground. From AI agents to open standards, it’s time to build smarter.
💬 Final Thoughts
The energy was electric—epic announcements, future-proof tech, and most importantly: the people. From new connections to familiar faces, this event reminded me once again why the Snowflake Community is truly one of a kind. Massive shout-out to the amazing folks behind the Data Superheroes program. You make the magic happen.
There’s really Snow place like Summit. Can’t wait to dive into what’s next—and of course, to see everyone again soon.
Snowflake Data Superhero and Chapter Lead for the Dutch Snowflake ❄️ User Group. Consulting Partner at Bravinci. Online also known as; DaAnalytics
