Snowflake updates AI platforms for business users and developers

Snowflake is pursuing two parallel tracks in developing AI within its platform: Snowflake Intelligence for a broad audience of business users and Cortex Code for developers and technical teams. The company is expanding both product lines, aiming to retain customers from switching to separate AI tools outside the Snowflake ecosystem. Snowflake Intelligence is positioned as a tool for employees without deep technical knowledge — analysts, managers, data specialists who need access to AI capabilities without writing code.

The product allows working with corporate data stored in Snowflake through a natural language interface. This is an attempt to lower the barrier to entry: companies invest in Snowflake as a data platform, and now the same data should become accessible for AI queries without needing to move it to external systems. Cortex Code, in turn, targets developers and engineers.

It is a lower-level toolkit: models, APIs, and capabilities for embedding AI functions into applications and pipelines directly within Snowflake infrastructure. Cortex Code allows teams to develop their own AI solutions without leaving the ecosystem, which reduces operational complexity and eliminates the need to synchronize data across multiple platforms. The division into two products is a strategically calculated decision.

Snowflake has long fought to remain the central data repository for enterprise customers. As AI tools from major labs grew in popularity, a real threat emerged: companies could begin exporting data from Snowflake to specialized AI platforms. Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Code are the answer to this risk: don't go elsewhere for AI, use AI where your data already resides.

Over the past two years, Snowflake has consistently expanded its AI capabilities. The broader Cortex brand includes built-in models for summarization, classification, semantic search, and text generation. Cortex Analyst allows asking questions about data in natural language.

Snowflake Arctic is the company's own open-weight model. The expansion of Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Code looks like the next step in consolidation: not a collection of disparate features, but finished products with a clear target audience. This matters to the market for several reasons.

First — a signal of enterprise AI maturity. When large data platforms begin building differentiated AI products for different roles (business versus developers), it means that demand for AI in the corporate sector is no longer universal. Second — competitive pressure on specialized platforms.

Databricks, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Fabric are moving in a similar direction, and Snowflake cannot afford to fall behind. For customers already working in the Snowflake ecosystem, the expansion means a simpler and cheaper transition to AI tools. For those still choosing a data platform, the presence of a built-in AI layer is becoming an increasingly compelling argument when evaluating vendors.