Reflections from Snowflake Summit 2025
By Daniel Pham, CEO of Silver Creek Insights
I’ve been to a lot of tech conferences in my life. But this year’s Snowflake Summit in San Francisco was different. The stakes felt higher. The energy was sharper. The questions people were asking weren’t just technical, they were existential.
Because this wasn’t just a conference about databases or data warehouses. This was a summit focused on the future of work, leadership, and how to build companies in an AI-first world.
I didn’t attend Snowflake Summit 2025 solely to hear product updates. I went to witness the direction of the entire data and AI world, and to ground myself in what’s real.
This is no longer theory. It’s reality. It’s moving fast. And most companies aren’t ready.
This summit made one thing clear:
We’re past the AI hype.
We’re beyond simple dashboards.
Now we’re building the future.
And if you’re not actively shaping that future, you’re already behind.
The AI era isn’t coming—it’s already here
The tone at the summit was different this year. It wasn’t about exploration. It was about execution.
People aren’t asking “What is AI?” anymore. They’re asking:
How do we move from dashboards to real decisions?
How do we shift from theory to production?
How do we eliminate noise and focus on what matters?
Every company is now an AI company. But very few are acting like one.
What Snowflake is really building
Snowflake has moved beyond being a data warehouse. They’re becoming the backbone of AI infrastructure, one platform to ingest, transform, model, deploy, and scale.
Here are the top 10 Snowflake Summit 2025 features that stood out:
- Cortex AI & AISQL
AI-native SQL functions that let you generate text, summarize, classify, and extract insights from unstructured data—right inside your data warehouse.
- Natural Language Interface (NLP Everywhere)
Ask your data questions in plain English. Get answers, charts, and decisions. Business intelligence becomes conversational. Dashboards are now dialogues.
- Private LLMs with enterprise governance
Deploy secure, compliant large language models directly within your Snowflake environment—no exposure to public clouds, no governance compromises.
- OpenFlow
Snowflake’s managed data movement layer powered by Apache NiFi. Unified handling of structured, semi-structured, unstructured, and streaming data, without third-party tools.
- Streamlit integration
Build and deploy interactive AI-powered data apps with minimal code, directly on Snowflake data. Accelerates productization of insights.
- Native dbt in Snowflake
Run dbt natively inside Snowflake. No handoffs. No orchestration headaches. Just faster, cleaner analytics workflows.
- Snowpipe streaming & pricing overhaul
New volume-based model slashes real-time ingestion costs by ~50%, making always-on data flows more accessible to more companies.
- Zero-copy integration
Instantly replicate and share data across clouds and environments without duplication or breaking lineage.
- Snowflake Postgres
Run Postgres workloads inside Snowflake. Modernize legacy apps without rewriting, and consolidate your stack with full SQL compatibility.
- AI inference APIs + speculative decoding
Run scalable, low-latency inference workloads and dramatically improve LLM response time—unlocking real-time generative AI for enterprise use cases.
Snowflake is creating a new standard: simple, secure, scalable, and human. This isn’t just tech enablement. It’s enterprise transformation.
The partner ecosystem is evolving because it has to
With all these new capabilities, some of Snowflake’s partner ecosystem is feeling the heat.
Data movement? That’s OpenFlow now.
ELT? Native dbt.
Streaming? Snowpipe.
App dev? Streamlit.
AI orchestration? Cortex.
Even Postgres workloads? Handled.
What used to require five or six tools from different vendors now lives inside one platform. And for many partners, that’s a direct challenge to their existence.
But this shift isn’t about Snowflake trying to dominate the stack; it’s about what customers actually want.
The enterprise tech market is oversaturated. It’s confusing. It’s expensive.
Clients don’t want 15 tools stitched together with duct tape.
That’s 15 vendor contracts, each one a cost, risk, and overhead.
They want one reliable, governed, high-performance engine for their data and AI foundation.
They want simplicity. Flexibility. And trust.
Snowflake is responding to that demand. And now more than ever, consolidation is clarity. A reduction in complexity and focus on Simplicity.
Complexity is a risk, a point of failure.
That said, the best-of-the-best vendors will still win because in every category, there’s always room for the luxury sports car, and customized best-of-the-best workflows for high-value use cases.
The tools, platforms, and consultancies that survive and thrive will be the ones that:
- Solve real business problems
- Own deep relationships
- Think architecturally
- And integrate cleanly into this new reality
That’s where Silver Creek Insights plays.
We help companies navigate this consolidation wave and design the right architecture—customized, cost-efficient, future-proof, and ready to deliver results. Not just for today, but for the next decade.
NLP is everything now
Here’s the shift that stuck with me most: we don’t just look at data anymore, we talk to it. And now, it talks back.
Human conversations with robots and AI. We love it.
We’re entering the era of data conversations, real, interactive dialogue between humans and data agents powered by large language models (LLMs). This isn’t sci-fi. It’s happening inside your Snowflake console.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the bridge between business users and AI systems.
Dashboards and reports? Not enough anymore.
The future of business intelligence is conversational.
You will ask your agents questions in plain language. They’ll respond with answers, insights, forecasts, and even action recommendations.
That’s the beauty of this moment:
We converse with AI the way we converse with each other, and it responds.
And the companies who embrace this shift—who lead their agents, not just deploy them—will win.
Today’s leaders need to be both effective leaders and excellent managers of people and AI.
This is forcing top performers to develop their human skills in an agentic AI world. Paradoxical, isn’t it?
Don’t overbuild. Overdeliver.
The old playbook said:
Buy more tools. Hire more roles. Wait months to see results. Maybe.
That’s dead weight now.
The winners in this next wave are building lean, aligned, and automated.
They know what they’re solving for. They cut the noise. They move fast, and stay compliant.
And they don’t need five vendors to do one job.
AI is making simplicity your competitive advantage.
AI doesn’t replace people, it elevates them
I recently had a conversation with a highly accomplished and well-funded CEO and data leader I deeply respect. He’s building something special: AI agents that can do the work of entire enterprise teams.
One of his top engineers asked him:
“In two years, you won’t need me. AI will be able to do this job. What are you going to do, fire me?”
The CEO replied:
“I’m not hiring you to do AI’s job. I’m hiring you to lead it. I need your stamp of approval. From a human I trust.”
That’s the point.
The real opportunity with AI is not replacement—it’s reinvention.
You still need leadership. You still need judgment.
You still need people who can see beyond code and connect business to behavior.
The future belongs to leaders who know how to activate AI, lead agents, and mobilize human potential.
What we do at Silver Creek Insights
At Silver Creek, we’re not just selling dashboards.
We’re building real systems, with real outcomes.
Our mission is to help clients:
- Architect AI and data strategies that align with business priorities.
- Eliminate unnecessary complexity and tool sprawl.
- Build scalable platforms that support automation and innovation.
- Enable your team to operate autonomously—so you can move fast and stay competitive.
We bring the clarity, architecture, and enablement you need to move forward, not in circles.
We don’t believe in “AI for AI’s sake.”
We believe in solving real problems, faster, with less friction, and building what lasts.
Final reflection: Start small. Start now.
You don’t need to boil the ocean. You just need to start—clearly, intentionally, and now.
If you’re not sure where to begin, start with this:
What’s the one use case that would move the needle for your business if it worked better, faster, or smarter?
Now work backwards: what decisions need to be made?
Then, what data would drive those decisions?
Finally, what architecture, tools, and AI capabilities will bring it to life?
Because in this era, delay is dangerous. The best companies and leaders of tomorrow are not hesitating with their AI and data strategy.
AI progress isn’t linear; it’s exponential.
And in an exponential world, the companies that wait aren’t just slow.
They compound risk while others compound capability.
The sooner you start, the faster you learn.
The faster you learn, the stronger your advantage.
That’s how market leaders are made now.
This is where your real AI journey begins, not with more dashboards, but with focus.
You don’t need more theory. You need a strategy that gets results.
You need a team that can see the whole picture and build it with you, end to end.
At Silver Creek Insights, we start every partnership with a free Data and AI Strategy Session, no fluff, no obligations.
Just clarity. A real game plan. Designed to help you win.
Because every company is now an AI company.
The question isn’t if you’ll adopt AI.
It’s how well you’ll do it, and who you’ll trust to help you do it right.
You don’t need to wait.
You don’t need to be perfect.
You just need to begin.
If you’re ready to start, we’d love to help.
Let’s build something that matters.
Daniel H. Pham
CEO, Silver Creek Insights
silvercreek.ai
