BIG DATA

Snowflake Inc. is expanding its push into enterprise artificial intelligence with a set of updates to its Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Code offerings, positioning its platform as a centralized control layer for what it calls the “agentic enterprise.”

The data cloud company said the enhancements are designed to help organizations move beyond AI experimentation toward production use by integrating data, models and enterprise applications into a single governed environment. The updates are part of a broader industry shift from AI systems that generate responses to those that can take action across business workflows.

Snowflake Intelligence (pictured) functions as a context-aware AI agent for business users. The company said the updated system can automate routine tasks, perform multi-step analysis and connect to commonly used enterprise applications through new integrations based on the Model Context Protocol. Supported services include Google LLC’s Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs, Atlassian Corp. PBC’s Jira and Salesforce Inc.’s namesake customer relationship management suite and Slack.

An iPhone application, which enters public preview soon, extends those capabilities to smartphones, allowing users to query data and trigger workflows remotely. Additional features include “deep research,” which generates multi-step, cited reports, and “artifacts,” which enable users to save and share analyses and workflows.

Snowflake said the system continuously learns from user behavior to personalize outputs and automate recurring tasks over time while keeping results grounded in governed enterprise data.

Data quality continues to be an impediment to AI deployment. A recent survey of 540 data practitioners by The Modern Data Company Inc. found that 89% said finding the right data as a top-three time drain, 61% said they struggle with poor naming conventions and 60% lack tools the tools to discover what data exists.

Cortex Code, an AI coding agent designed for data-centric workflows, is being expanded to be a builder layer for AI. Since its launch in late 2025, Snowflake said more than half of its customers are using the tool to accelerate development workflows.

New capabilities extend Cortex Code across external data systems including Amazon Web Services Inc.’s Glue, Databricks Inc.’s platform and the open-source PostgreSQL, allowing developers to build applications without migrating data. The platform also integrates with other AI systems through MCP and the Agent Communication Protocol, enabling interoperability with existing agent frameworks.

Snowflake is also introducing integrations with popular environments such as Visual Studio Code and a plugin for Anthropic PBC’s Claude Code. A new software development kit supporting Python and TypeScript allows enterprises to embed Cortex Code capabilities into applications written in those languages.

Additional features include browser-based “sandboxes” for running code without local setup, along with tools that allow developers to preview workflows before execution and interact directly with charts and tables.

Snowflake said more than 9,100 customers are now using its AI products weekly, citing examples of enterprises applying the technology to operational analytics, customer service and manufacturing.

Executives framed the updates as part of a broader effort to simplify how organizations deploy AI at scale. “AI is changing how every company operates, and the platforms that win will make it easy to put AI into practice with the right data and guardrails,” Baris Gultekin, vice president of AI at Snowflake, said in a statement.

The company’s strategy centers on consolidating data, governance and AI capabilities into a unified platform, an approach it argues helps enterprises manage the complexity of multi-system environments while accelerating the transition from pilot projects to production deployments.