The Needs of Agentic AI
In his keynote, Ramaswamy highlighted several challenges that organizations face related to data and context, which are critical for AI success. Data must be secured, governed, compliant and discoverable. “Our data is a mess,” he said. “There’s more of it than ever before. It’s structured, unstructured, partially structured — bringing data out of silos is a challenge for every organization.”
The good news, Ramaswamy added, is that the Snowflake platform enables organizations to deploy their AI tools close to their data and can even work across multiple cloud providers.
With high-quality data, organizations can take advantage of AI models that continue to grow more powerful. “The pace of innovation with AI models has been nothing short of stunning,” he said. But these models must be combined with high-quality data to create a true advantage for organizations.
Next, they need to integrate their data and AI models with software and applications through tools such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard introduced by Anthropic that provides a standardized way for AI models and agents to connect to external tools, data sources and applications. “The future of AI isn’t just about getting an answer,” Ramaswamy said. “It’s about turning fragmented systems into actionable insight.”
The next step for AI success is to implement an agentic control plane that coordinates actions across data, software and applications. This control plane governs the actions taken by AI agents, ensuring that they work in coordination, even across business departments such as finance and logistics.
DISCOVER: Turn data into insights and accelerate artificial intelligence initiatives.
Putting AI in the Hands of Users
The Snowflake platform features tools such as Snowflake Intelligence (whose name has changed to Snowflake CoWork) and Cortex Code (now known simply as CoCo). These tools democratize the use of AI, bringing it beyond the purview of IT teams into every line of business in an organization.
“With Snowflake Intelligence, every user in your enterprise now has an AI agent,” Ramaswamy said. “The things that used to require a specialized team now just require an agent.”
Emmanuel Frenehard, executive vice president and chief digital officer of Sanofi, drove this point home by noting that his company uses AI agents to carry out tasks across departments as diverse as procurement, HR, IT support and sales.
To take full advantage of the power of AI agents, organizational leaders must focus on the business value of their AI initiatives. “We place relentless focus on business outcomes,” said Manish Sharma, chief strategy and services officer for Accenture. “We are relentlessly linking AI projects to line items.”
Speakers throughout Snowflake Summit 26 predicted that the gains organizations are making with AI will continue to grow into the foreseeable future. “Everything we have seen indicates this progress is going to continue,” said Daniela Amodei, president of Anthropic. “Don’t just think about today. Think about what’s going to be.”
LEARN MORE! Check out this page for our complete coverage of Snowflake Summit 26.
