At the 2025 Snowflake Summit, Snowflake wowed the crowd with new tools for moving and understanding data, including Openflow for easy data transfers and Cortex for smarter data insights. They introduced cool AI assistants that help people use data just by talking or writing simple commands. Snowflake also bought Crunchy Data, bringing powerful and secure open-source databases to their platform. Their marketplace now bursts with ready-to-use AI products and data, making it easier for companies to find what they need. The whole event felt energetic and full of big, bold ideas for the future of data.
What were the key announcements at Snowflake’s 2025 Summit?
At the 2025 Snowflake Summit, Snowflake announced major innovations including:
- Openflow for hybrid multicloud data ingestion.
- Cortex Knowledge Extensions for advanced data insights.
- AI assistants and Cortex AISQL for generative AI via SQL.
- Acquisition of Crunchy Data, bringing enterprise-grade PostgreSQL.
- Expanded Snowflake Marketplace with agentic products and AI-ready datasets.
Opening the Floor: Where Data and Ambition Collide
Let’s set the scene: the 2025 Snowflake Summit, abuzz with the kind of low-level electrical tension you feel before a thunderstorm—or is that just the espresso talking? Here’s Snowflake, unmistakably the Sisyphus of data cloud platforms, rolling its boulder onwards and upwards. But this year, they didn’t just push; they flung the thing sky-high, unveiling an arsenal of AI-powered innovations and integrations that have a whiff of inevitability, like the first rumble of a summer downpour.
Was I surprised? Yes, but not in the “fall off your chair” way. It was more the slow-growing awe you get after watching a jazz improvisation—seemingly chaotic, yet, somehow, every note lands. Snowflake’s theme was clear: empower enterprises with agentic AI, seamless data flows, and governance so robust you could bounce a quarter off it. Life sciences, pharmaceuticals, regulated industries—the message: we see you, and we’ve got plans.
And not just any plans. The sort of plans that make you scribble diagrams on napkins at 2 a.m.
Openflow, Cortex, and the Symphony of Data
Let’s cut to the showstoppers. Snowflake’s headline act: Openflow. Now, if the term “hybrid multicloud data ingestion service” sounds like a mouthful, that’s because it is—like biting into a babka and discovering an unexpected twist of cinnamon. Openflow isn’t just another pipeline; it’s engineered for the hyperspectral realities of today’s data. Imagine moving your data from on-prem to Azure, then back to AWS, all before your coffee gets cold. Organizations in regulated sectors—think biotechs juggling FDA compliance—can now move petabytes without breaking a sweat. Or at least, not as much of a sweat.
Then comes Cortex Knowledge Extensions—a name that would be at home in a William Gibson novel. These are third-party pipeline plugins, designed to wring every last drop of insight from your structured and unstructured data. Natural language processing? Check. Data enrichment for R&D? Check. I remember, not so long ago, wrangling with a messy set of clinical trial notes; if I’d had Cortex then, perhaps my coffee wouldn’t have gone cold.
But the real crowd-pleaser? AI assistants stitched into the Snowflake fabric, branded under Snowflake Intelligence and Data Science Agents. Suddenly, your analysts are conversing with data, not just querying it. The new Cortex AISQL opens up generative AI workflows using plain SQL—a move as audacious as letting a cat walk across your keyboard and discovering it’s written a haiku. I almost doubted the approach, recalling my own early forays into natural language querying (which, incidentally, ended with a blue screen and a sheepish call to tech support). But—aha!—here, the awkwardness is gone.
And for those still shackled to legacy data warehouses: SnowConvert AI. Think of it as a digital sherpa, guiding old SQL scripts to new, cloud-draped peaks. No more nights spent deciphering cryptic migration errors. Relief.
Crunchy Data: A $250 Million Leap into Open Source
Snowflake’s pièce de résistance? Acquiring Crunchy Data, the PostgreSQL maestros, in a deal estimated at $250 million (TechCrunch). With this, Snowflake isn’t just buying tech—it’s buying pedigree. Crunchy Data brings FedRAMP-compliant, enterprise-grade PostgreSQL, already trusted by the likes of UPS, SAS, Moneytree, and yes, even the U.S. Homeland Security. (I pictured the latter’s server room: humming, over‑airconditioned, and now a little less crunchy, a little more Snowflake.)
Their new offering, Snowflake Postgres, is aimed at organizations requiring scalable, secure, and deeply compliant open-source databases. Suddenly, Snowflake’s no longer just a data warehouse; it’s a palimpsest of modern and legacy architectures. I’ll admit, part of me wondered if this was simply following the industry zeitgeist—after all, Salesforce and ServiceNow have been gobbling up data infrastructure firms too. But then I remembered the sense of envy I felt last year, watching a peer breeze through an audit thanks to Crunchy’s compliance toolkit. Sometimes, it’s best to follow the current.
There’s a whiff of dry-erase marker and printer toner hanging over every big acquisition. (Or maybe that’s nostalgia.)
Marketplace, Partners, and a Pinch of Chaos
Not content to rest, Snowflake has supercharged its marketplace: a bustling agora now teeming with agentic products and AI-ready datasets. Here, companies can buy, sell, and deploy third-party applications with a click, all while maintaining the security posture of a Swiss vault. The aim? To turn the marketplace into a hothouse of innovation—cross-pollinating ideas, models, and data assets. The vibe reminds me of a well‑stocked spice market: overwhelming at first, but full of unexpected treasures if you take the time to browse.
And they didn’t stop there. Snowflake’s beefed up integrations with titans like Salesforce and Databricks ([source](