“Snowflake wants to be the intelligence layer across the modern data stack, even when components sit outside its core platform. The endgame is platform gravity. If developers rely on Cortex to build and maintain pipelines, Snowflake increases its strategic control over data logic, governance, and AI enablement, regardless of where raw data physically resides,” Fersht said.
As a result, Fersht added, the move should intensify competition around the AI-native data stack: “Databricks has long positioned itself around openness and lakehouse flexibility. Snowflake moving Cortex Code CLI into dbt and Airflow narrows that differentiation by signaling it can operate across heterogeneous environments.”
Snowflake has also introduced a subscription plan for Cortex Code CLI to allow customers who don’t already have a Snowflake workload to try the AI coding agent across their data workflows.
