Snowflake Extends Apache Iceberg Support to Strengthen Open Data and AI Capabilities

Snowflake has announced expanded support for Apache Iceberg tables, aiming to give enterprises the flexibility of open formats along with its platform performance and data security. The move allows organisations to work with open-format data without compromising compute power or governance.

“With Snowflake’s latest Iceberg tables innovations, customers can work with their open data exactly as they would with data stored in the Snowflake platform, all while removing complexity and preserving Snowflake’s enterprise-grade performance and security,” said Christian Kleinerman, EVP of Product at Snowflake.

The new capabilities allow customers to manage, analyse, and share data stored in Iceberg format using the same features available to native Snowflake tables. Snowflake’s enhancements bring secure data sharing, built-in governance, and support for lakehouse analytics, including upcoming general availability for Search Optimisation Service and Query Acceleration Service.

Snowflake also offers managed Iceberg tables, enabling customers to use open storage formats while maintaining performance. The platform now supports replication and syncing for Iceberg tables (in private preview), supporting continuity in case of outages or attacks.

Thousands of organisations, including Illumina, Komodo Health, Medidata, and WHOOP, use Snowflake to activate open-format data for AI and analytics use cases. Snowflake’s secure sharing capabilities now extend to Iceberg, enabling the same data distribution and monetisation workflows used on native tables.

Snowflake also highlighted its ongoing support for open source, noting that 35% of its acquisitions over the past four years involved companies focused on open data technologies. 

It actively contributes to several open source projects to enhance data interoperability and support enterprise AI workloads. These include Apache Iceberg, which provides a framework for open lakehouse management and data governance, and Apache NiFi, supported through Datavolo—an acquisition made in 2024—to enable real-time pipeline orchestration. Snowflake also backs Apache Polaris (Incubating), a project focused on ensuring cross-cloud interoperability for Iceberg. 

Additionally, Snowflake supports Modin, acquired in 2023, to help scale pandas-based data processing, and Streamlit, which enables the creation of data applications and interactive dashboards. With the 2024 acquisition of TruEra, Snowflake is also advancing AI explainability, bias detection, and regulatory compliance.

“The future of data is open, but it also needs to be easy,” Kleinerman added. “Customers shouldn’t have to choose between open formats and best-in-class performance or business continuity.”

By integrating Apache Iceberg into its broader AI Data Cloud strategy, Snowflake looks forward to accelerating the development of AI-powered applications, analytics, and insights without vendor lock-in.