2025 Year in Review
Looking back at the pivotal moments for the Data Cloud in 2025.
2025 was a watershed year. We started the year talking about “GenAI POCs” and we ended it shipping “Agentic Native Apps.”
The Big Themes#
1. AI Became Boring (In a Good Way)#
In 2023/2024, AI was hype. In 2025, it became infrastructure. Cortex functions are now just… functions. We call them
like we call SUM(). This normalization of AI means it’s finally delivering value.
2. Iceberg Won the War#
The “Table Format War” is effectively over. Snowflake’s embrace of Iceberg (and the Polaris Catalog) meant that the “walled garden” accusations are dead. Customers are confidently storing data in open formats, managed by Snowflake.
3. Application Development#
With the maturity of Streamlit in Snowflake and Native Apps, Data Engineering teams effectively became “Full Stack” teams. We aren’t just building pipelines anymore; we are building products.
Top Features Shipped#
- Snowflake Intelligence: The unification of Search and SQL.
- Serverless Tasks Flex: Cheaper compute for non-critical pipelines.
- Git Integration GA: Finally, real CI/CD without the hacky workarounds.
Conclusion#
It’s been a ride. The pace of innovation hasn’t slowed down; if anything, the convergence of AI and Data has accelerated it. Rest up, because 2026 is going to be even faster.