Reflections on the Snowflake World Tour: exciting times in financial services

Thursday 2nd October saw the Snowflake World Tour 2025 hit New York City, showcasing the latest innovations driving business transformation with data, AI and collaboration. I was among more than 3,000 Snowflake customers and partners at the Javits Center, speaking to my network about how they’re using data and AI to transform their businesses, and how the latest developments in the Snowflake ecosystem are affecting the talent market.

Introducing Cortex AI

In a city that’s considered the beating heart of the financial services industry in the US and home to some of the biggest banks in the world, it was fitting that Snowflake launched Cortex AI – a comprehensive AI infrastructure platform designed to help financial services organizations build autonomous workflows with advanced agent capabilities. I was particularly interested to discover how Snowflake have added a high-powered SQL prompt that will allow users to extract insights from documents, images and audio such as phone conversations.

These developments are likely to create significant demand for specialist AI and data talent in the coming months – people who can develop, implement and support Cortex AI within financial services organizations – as well as a need for upskilling in these functionalities. For tips on how your organization can enhance its AI skills, read my blog on Upskilling vs hiring: how your organization can keep up with AI.

Integrations will create demand for talent

Snowflake are investing heavily in supporting some of the larger players in the data, cloud and CRM ecosystem, such as Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS), with whom we’ve seen a lot of integration work. Right now, there are specialists in Snowflake and specialists in platforms such as Salesforce or AWS – but not many people who are considered experts in both. With Snowflake actively strengthening these partnerships, we’re likely to see far greater demand for candidates who specialise technically in both platforms.

As more companies integrate their cloud or CRM with Snowflake, they’ll need to bring onboard people who understand Snowflake, Salesforce and AWS as an ecosystem, and can assist with integration projects. Given these are generally two separate skillsets that you rarely see in the same candidate, it will be interesting to see how many people will upskill themselves in the integration methods between the platforms.

Get in touch

How are these developments in the Snowflake ecosystem affecting your organization or career? If you want to find out more about the main highlights from the Snowflake World Tour, are a data or AI professional looking for your next opportunity, or an organization looking to make your next hire, please get in touch with me for an informal conversation.