00:00The one that caught my eye was the relationship with Google Cloud and bringing the availability of the latest Gemini models to Snowflake.
00:09And the reason I want to start with that is you are all about choice, right?
00:13Because you can look at Anthropic, OAI, but there must have been an indication to you, Shridhar, that those Gemini models are in demand amongst your customer base.
00:24Hey, Ed, it's great to be here. Absolutely. Gemini models are among the best in the world, and a lot of our customers are asking for access to these models.
00:35We are thrilled to be expanding our partnership with Google Cloud, similar to what we have done with our big partners, AWS and Azure. It's a big step forward for us.
00:45Can you just explain the basics of the Snowflake business model? We always talk about Snowflake being a different layer above the primary cloud, but why is it important that through Cortex-AR, your platform, any given enterprise customer can access the underlying model?
01:01This is a great question. Snowflake is the data layer that sits above cloud service providers, the AWS and Azure and GCP. We are very much a data-centric platform.
01:14We are about making it really easy to ingest, clean, and be able to run analytics on top of the data.
01:22And AI, especially Snowflake intelligence that we are launching, is a game changer because it brings the access, the power of all the data directly to end users.
01:33And what required dashboards, what required analysts is right now at the fingertips, at the voices of every single person.
01:41And that's the reason why Snowflake plays such a critical role.
01:45We are among the best data platforms that run on top of the hyperscalers.
01:52And it is that that gives us incredible ability to create value using AI with partnerships with the best folks in the world, the open AIs and Anthropic, and now Gemini.
02:02Creating value. I think that has been the proof point, the watchword of this entire year, Shrida.
02:08How can you turn to our audience and say, this is return on AI investment. This is what my customers are experiencing.
02:16This is a great question. First of all, our model is a consumption model, meaning that Snowflake doesn't get paid.
02:24We don't get to recognize revenue unless customers actually use products.
02:29We don't sell subscriptions. That automatically ties us to utility that we create.
02:34With our AI products, we work with our customers, whether it is a TS Imagine or the USA Bobsled team, to create products that they get additional value from.
02:45For example, often replacing an existing dashboarding solution like we have done at Snowflake, we are confident that using Snowflake intelligence, we can replace a bunch of dashboards and run the entire data access in a much more flexible way for a fraction of the cost.
03:05We very much believe in showing ROI, return on investment for every single project that we do.
03:13And the consumption model is a huge help here because if the product isn't used, there's no revenue on our side.
03:18So, Shrida, when we're talking in the market writ large about worries of an AI bubble, as people are perhaps selling certain names because they feel that the fundamentals have become dislocated with the actual valuation of companies, how are you thinking in your context?
03:34How are you worrying perhaps that companies will stop their spending until they get ROI in the near term?
03:40Well, this is where, as I said, our model is very, very helpful because we don't ask for investments ahead of the return.
03:49Very much, we create pilots, we create proofs of concept and show value to our customers, and only then is it scaled.
03:59In our own example, we launched a tool that indexed all of the enablement information, the education information for our sales team, and then we started putting more and more things.
04:08Now, all of our sales information lives in a single agent, is used pretty much by everyone in the sales org, certainly me at Snowflake.
04:16It is that step-by-step launch and not a big bang launch that is also important.
04:21And keeping that focus on what are projects that go about creating value, are they replacing existing systems, are they lowering costs, that kind of maniacal focus is what is helping us successful, even in the AI era, because we very carefully tally all of this up and make sure that our customers feel like we are creating value every step of the way.
04:44Shrida, are we, or are we not, in an AI bubble based on what you're seeing every day through Snowflake?
04:54Well, absolutely.
04:57There's a lot of enthusiasm about it.
04:59But at Snowflake, I and every employee at Snowflake is focused on what does this mean for our customers.
05:07We are back to basics.
05:08We created Snowflake Intelligence because we wanted to bring the power of agentic AI to every single user within a company in a meaningful way.
05:19We wanted to make sure that data analysts, who, mind you, get paid a lot, are focused on helping create data agents rather than writing endless SQL queries, as I've done in my life.
05:31And that focus on what are projects that can create value for our customers, how do we get them to production fast, how do we show the return to them is what we can do.
05:43The outside market valuations, those things are distractions.
05:47I think the more we focus on back to basics, the better off we are.
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