Snowflake Says AI Is Accelerating Data Migrations and Expanding CoCo Adoption

Snowflake NYSE: SNOW executives said artificial intelligence is changing the pace of data migrations, expanding the company’s potential customer base and accelerating adoption of its newer AI products, including its CoCo coding agent.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, Chief Executive Officer Sridhar Ramaswamy said customers are increasingly viewing AI as a way to modernize data environments faster and pursue business outcomes rather than simply complete technology projects.

“AI is having a pretty profound impact on how quickly you can get those done,” Ramaswamy said of data migrations.

He cited a large manufacturing customer pursuing a Teradata migration that expects to complete the effort in less than three quarters, a timeline he said would have been unusual several years ago.

Ramaswamy said discussions with customers have shifted toward applications such as invoice-processing automation, supply-chain optimization and faster creation of custom customer data platforms.

In one example, he said a large energy manufacturer estimated that a one-percentage-point improvement in efficiency on roughly $10 billion in annual payments would represent a significant opportunity.

Ramaswamy said coding agents could reshape the services industry by reducing the time and uncertainty associated with migrations.

Rather than charging under traditional time-and-materials models, more system integrators may be able to provide fixed-price, outcome-based engagements, he said.

“The progressive system integrators are going, ‘I can guarantee outcomes,’” Ramaswamy said.

He added that services are unlikely to disappear, but could become smaller and more closely tied to customer outcomes.

Chief Financial Officer Brian Robins said Snowflake bases guidance for its core platform and migrations on observed customer behavior, supported by years of historical data.

For newer products, however, the company takes a more conservative approach because it has less adoption history to model.

Robins said Snowflake had two quarters of data for CoCo and was becoming more confident in what it could infer from customer usage.

He also said customers are reaching consumption run rates faster than in the past as they deploy the platform more quickly using Snowflake, partners and AI agents.

To support faster implementation, Ramaswamy said Snowflake has created roles including activation engineers and activation solution engineers focused on helping new customers go live sooner.