Timothy Spann

Posted on Jun 15

All Data and AI Weekly #246-15 June 2026

#agenticai #ai #snowflake #apacheiceberg

All Data and AI Weekly #246-15 June 2026

( AI, Data, Agentic AI, Cortex Code, NiFi, Iceberg, Polaris, Streamlit, Python, Java, SQL, MCP, LLM, RAG, Cortex AI, AIFN, Search, Unstructured Data )

Tim's Corner: Snowflake Summit 2026 Recap - The Agentic Data Cloud is Here

Welcome to issue 246 - the Snowflake Summit 2026 Recap Edition! What a week in San Francisco! Summit 2026 delivered on every front: AI agents, open data, and governance took center stage. The announcements were massive - Claude Fable 5 on Cortex AI, OpenAI partnership for business-native AI, AI Smart Pipelines, Cortex Code Desktop with MCP and dbt panel, Snowflake Optima for query performance planning, Online Feature Store with stream feature views, SPCS AI_COMPLETE and AI_EMBED in containers, DCM Projects, Batch Inference Jobs for vision models, and Semantic Layer for AI Risk in Finance. The engineering team published on efficient ingestion patterns, context caching, and scaling price-performant AI inference. Plus partner awards, distributed medical image processing with MONAI, and Tim's Summit talk video is live! The momentum continues with hands-on labs and webinars coming up. Let's dig into everything.

Tim's Content

Summit 2026 Talk - Video Live!

Tim's Snowflake Summit 2026 talk on NiFi and Agents is now available:

Video: Tim Spann at Snowflake Summit 2026

Summit Notes and Demos Repository

GitHub: SNACKAI-CoCo-SnowflakeSummit2026

Upcoming Events

June 23: Power Your Agents with dbt and Snowflake - Virtual
June 24: From Raw Data to a Conversational AI Agent with Snowflake in 90 Minutes (KOP) - Virtual
June 25: Build Smarter: A Snowflake Hands-On Lab Day - In-Person

ETL with Snowflake Webinar (Astronomer): https://www.astronomer.io/events/webinars/etl-with-snowflake-video/

All Snowflake Events: https://www.snowflake.com/about/events/

Summit 2026 Announcements & Blogs

OpenAI + Snowflake: Business-Native AI

OpenAI and Snowflake partner for business-native AI, bringing OpenAI's models natively into the Snowflake platform.

Claude Fable 5 on Snowflake Cortex AI

Claude Fable 5 is now available on Snowflake Cortex AI - Anthropic's latest model purpose-built for enterprise data workflows.

AI Smart Pipelines: What's New

AI Smart Pipelines - intelligent, self-managing data pipelines powered by AI that adapt to changing data patterns.

Read more: AI Smart Pipelines: What's New

Data Development as Simple as a Prompt

Snowflake's vision for making data development as simple as writing a prompt.

Snowflake Optima: Planning Query Performance

Snowflake Optima - a new approach to planning and optimizing query performance across workloads.

Efficient Snowflake Ingestion: Query-Ready Data

Engineering blog on making data query-ready immediately upon ingestion - eliminating the wait between landing data and querying it.

Scaling Price-Performant AI Inference with Snowflake

How Snowflake scales price-performant AI inference for enterprise workloads.

Semantic Layer for AI Risk in Finance

Using Snowflake's semantic layer to manage AI risk in financial services.

Deploy Snowpark Python with Cortex Code

Deploy Snowpark Python applications using Cortex Code for governed, AI-assisted development.

2026 Summit Partner Awards

Celebrating the 2026 Snowflake Summit Partner Award winners.

Read more: 2026 Summit Partner Awards

AI Agents and Open Data Governance at Summit

SiliconAngle coverage: AI agents, open data, and governance take center stage at Snowflake Summit.

Cortex AI & Agents

Cortex Code Desktop (Limited Access)

Cortex Code Desktop - the full governed data agent experience as a desktop application.

Product Page: https://www.snowflake.com/en/product/limited-access/cortex-code/

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/LIMITEDACCESS/cortex-code-desktop

Cortex Code Desktop: dbt Panel

Cortex Code Desktop now includes a dedicated dbt panel for managing dbt projects directly from the agent.

MCP Lands in Cortex Code Desktop

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is now available in Cortex Code Desktop with new configuration options.

Teach Your Cortex Code Agent Your Stack

Make your Cortex Code Desktop agent domain-specific by teaching it your stack and patterns.

Cortex Code Agent SDK

Documentation for the Cortex Code Agent SDK for building custom agents.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/cortex-code-agent-sdk/cortex-code-agent-sdk

Remote Development VS Code Extension (Limited Access)

Remote development VS Code extension for Snowflake environments.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/LIMITEDACCESS/remote-development-vscode-extension

SPCS AI_COMPLETE (Limited Access)

Run AI_COMPLETE directly in Snowpark Container Services for custom inference workloads.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/LIMITEDACCESS/spcs-ai-complete

SPCS AI_EMBED (Limited Access)

Run AI_EMBED directly in Snowpark Container Services for custom embedding workloads.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/LIMITEDACCESS/spcs-ai-embed

Batch Inference Jobs

Run batch inference jobs with ML models at scale on Snowflake.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/developer-guide/snowflake-ml/inference/batch-inference-jobs

Context Caching in Snowflake Cortex AI

Context caching for Cortex AI - reduce latency and cost by caching repeated context across calls.

Activating Snowflake AI/BI Agents with Claude

Guide for activating Snowflake AI/BI agents using Claude.

Guardrails Not Guesswork: Cortex Guard Guide

Complete guide to Cortex Guard and enterprise AI safety - guardrails not guesswork.

Snowflake Platform Updates

Online Feature Store: Stream Feature Views (Limited Access)

Online Feature Store with stream feature views for real-time ML feature serving.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/LIMITEDACCESS/online-feature-store-preview#stream-feature-views

DCM Projects (Limited Access)

Data Cloud Marketplace Projects - early access to collaborative data product development.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/LIMITEDACCESS/dcm-projects/dcm-projects-early-access

OpenFlow Connectors Dashboard

Unified dashboard for OpenFlow connectors monitoring and management.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/data-integration/openflow/connectors-dashboard

Streamlit in Workspaces

Streamlit in Workspaces - build and deploy Streamlit apps in Snowflake workspaces.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/developer-guide/streamlit/streamlit-in-workspaces/streamlit-in-workspaces-overview

BCR 2026-10_21

Behavior Change Release notes.

Release Notes: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2026/10_21

NTILE Function

SQL reference for the NTILE window function.

Documentation: https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/functions/ntile

Snowflake Alerts + Microsoft Teams Formatting

Guide for sending Snowflake Alerts to Microsoft Teams with rich formatting.

Automated Intelligence Dev Day 2026 Hands-On Lab

Official Automated Intelligence Dev Day 2026 hands-on lab repository.

GitHub: https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/automated-intelligence-dev-day-2026-hol

Quanton Snowflake Guides

Quanton developer documentation and guides for Snowflake.

Guide: https://quanton.dev/docs/guides/snowflake/

Apache Iceberg

Iceberg Azure DLS External Volumes (GA - June 12)

Azure Data Lake Storage external volumes for Iceberg tables are now GA.

Iceberg Default Metadata Format (GA - June 5)

Default metadata format for Iceberg tables is now GA.

Modernizing Hadoop and Hive to Snowflake Managed Iceberg

Best practices for migrating Hadoop and Hive workloads to Snowflake-managed Iceberg.

ML & Data Science

Distributed Medical Image Processing with MONAI

Guide for distributed medical image processing using MONAI on Snowpark Container Services.

Guide: https://www.snowflake.com/en/developers/guides/distributed-medical-image-processing-with-monai/

ML Batch Inference with Vision Models

Guide for running batch inference with vision models on Snowflake.

Guide: https://www.snowflake.com/en/developers/guides/ml-batch-inference-with-vision-models/

From the Community: Medium & Blogs

Scaling Price-Performant AI Inference - Enterprise AI inference at scale
Cortex Code Desktop: dbt Panel - dbt integration in Cortex Code Desktop
MCP Lands in Cortex Code Desktop - MCP configuration deep dive
Teach Your Agent Your Stack - Domain-specific Cortex Code agents
Context Caching in Cortex AI - Reduce latency and cost
Guardrails Not Guesswork: Cortex Guard - Enterprise AI safety guide
Modernizing Hadoop to Snowflake Iceberg - Migration best practices
From Legacy BI to Intelligence Layer - Lessons from Snowflake's own migration (carried over)
Capital One: Graph Database Evaluation - Evaluating graph databases at enterprise scale

Summit 2026 Session Videos

GitHub: Community & Tools

automated-intelligence-dev-day-2026-hol - Snowflake Labs Dev Day 2026 hands-on lab
SNACKAI-CoCo-SnowflakeSummit2026 - Tim's Summit notes and demos
nvidia/skillspector - NVIDIA skill inspector for AI agents
public-apis - Collective list of free public APIs
LLMs-local - Run LLMs locally
donutbrowser - Lightweight browser for automation
fast-alpr - Fast automatic license plate recognition
secluso/core - Security-focused core framework
ingestr - CLI tool to ingest data between databases
streambed - Streaming data utilities
safal207/DI - Data integration patterns
microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit - Microsoft agent governance
perplexityai/bumblebee - Perplexity AI's Bumblebee
NangoHQ/nango - Unified API for integrations
glanceapp/glance - Self-hosted dashboard
AudioMass - Browser-based audio editor
NeuralNote - AI audio-to-MIDI
MerMarkEditor - Markdown + Mermaid editor

SNACK-AI: The 2026 Pattern

As we look forward in 2026, SNACK-AI is the architectural pattern for powering AI applications at any scale - from mobile phones and robots to massive enterprise clusters.

SNACK-AI integrates: