Months after Chief Executive Frank Slootman’s departure from the data cloud company Snowflake Inc., the organization finds itself turning a new chapter.

The change was a shock to the market, but at the time of the announcement, there was a bigger picture at play, according to theCUBE Research Chief Analyst Dave Vellante.

“The other thing that Slootman did, he continued to invest in engineering talent so that company is in very good shape,” Vellante said on an episode of theCUBE podcast aired shortly after the news of Slootman’s departure. “They’re facing some challenges, there’s no question. People don’t like their pricing. They think it’s too expensive. But that’s a good problem to have if you can sell the value.”

Slootman’s successor, Google LLC’s former ad chief Sridhar Ramaswamy, now leads the company as the AI wave reshapes computing infrastructure and data-driven services.

The company’s strategy moving forward will be explored by Vellante and theCUBE co-host Rebecca Knight as they speak with company executives during the event. Join theCUBE from June 4-6 for our coverage of Data Cloud Summit, live on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

Check out what’s in store for the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit:

Earnings have brought good and bad news to investors

Prior to Slootman’s departure, Snowflake was flying high as the company crushed Wall Street’s expectations in November 2023, reporting earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 25 cents per share, well ahead of Wall Street’s target of 16 cents. Slootman highlighted the company’s product revenue growth of 34% from a year earlier to $698 million.

“These results reflect strong execution in a broadly stabilizing macro environment,” he said at the time.

But the stock was sent tumbling with news of Slootman’s departure in February, falling more than 20% in extended trading. Some thought the drop was an overreaction from investors, especially given the fact that surprise leadership changes aren’t often warmly welcomed by analysts or investors.

“The company will continue to enjoy Slootman’s experience and strategic vision [as chairman of the board], and his replacement Sridhar Ramaswamy is hardly a neophyte,” industry analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc., told SiliconANGLE in February.

The company’s earnings call in February brought good and bad news to investors. Snowflake smashed the Street’s forecasts, but its forecast for the quarter was less than impressive.

New efforts around open-source AI models

As it looks to respond to the AI wave, Snowflake has documented some huge growth recently. In March, the company released a report analyzing more than 9,000 Snowflake accounts. That report found that AI use cases now dominate, with usage of the Python language, tags, unstructured data and purpose-built AI development tools showing double- and triple-digit growth.

Growth in Python is coming at the expense of Java, according to Christian Kleinerman, executive vice president of product at Snowflake.

“We can now see Python is becoming the de facto standard. Every organization now leads with Python [application program interfaces],” Kleinerman said.

To respond to OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google LLC’s Gemini, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Llama 2 and Mistral AI’s Mixtral, Snowflake recently debuted its own open-source Arctic AI model. The release of the Arctic LLM represented a “watershed moment” for Snowflake, according to Ramaswamy, who said the aim isn’t to position Snowflake as an AI company, but to enable customers to use AI more efficiently and reliably.

“By delivering industry-leading intelligence and efficiency in a truly open way to the AI community, we are furthering the frontiers of what open-source AI can do,” Ramaswamy said.

It’s clear Snowflake is in the middle of a transition. Though the company is still a data company, Arctic is a signal that it has a mandate to deliver end-to-end AI-enabled solutions, according to Vellante.

“Does the world need another LLM?” Vellante asked. “Probably not, but Snowflake needs one to demonstrate AI leadership and understand how to optimize its data platform for LLMs. At the same time, in my view, Snowflake must demonstrate proficiency with a diversity of LLMs and offer customers optionality.”

Growing the ecosystem: key acquisitions and partnerships

At the Data Cloud Summit, particular focus will be put on Snowflake’s partner strategy, intended to support the infrastructure needed to build, manage and deploy AI apps, tools, services and language models. Snowflake has rolled out a number of partnerships in the past year, including one with Informatica Inc. intended to enhance the intelligent data management sector.

Informatica SuperPipe for Snowflake is intended to get mission-critical data out of hard-to-get places at a 3.5 times faster replication and ingestion rate, according to Rik Tamm-Daniels, general vice president of ecosystem alliances and technology at Informatica Inc. Reducing the latency of data and making it more real time is what SuperPipe’s all about.

“We see up to about three and a half times faster performance than our previous kind of change data capture replication technology. It’s a huge leap forward, leveraging some of the latest Snowpipe streaming capabilities from Snowflake,” Tamm-Daniels said.

Acquisitions have also been a big focus for Snowflake in recent months. In December 2023, the company scooped up data clean room company Samooha Inc. in its ninth acquisition of the year.

What comes next for the company in this new era will be a big focus during the Data Cloud Summit event. TheCUBE will provide full coverage of the event to capture all the breaking news and provide analyst-driven commentary. You can follow theCUBE’s wall-to-wall coverage for firsthand insights.

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of the Data Cloud Summit from June 4-6. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of Data Cloud Summit, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

During the Data Cloud Summit event, theCUBE analysts will provide on-site reporting and exclusive interviews with data platform experts, CXOs, analysts and investors to discuss the opportunities and challenges within today’s generative AI ecosystem. We’re uncovering AI use cases in the enterprise, where data is driving the application revolution.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Data Cloud Summit. Neither Snowflake Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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