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The Cognitive Revolution / episode intelligence

Snowflake VP of AI Baris Gultekin on Bringing AI to Data, Agent Design, Text-2-SQL, RAG & More

14 Jan 2026 26 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Baris GultekinNathan Labenz

Claim mix

belief 12evaluation 5recommendation 4prediction 2uncertainty 1commitment 1preference 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

26 published records

01 / recommendation

Makes sense. So we work with these customers to build custom models for them. But in most cases, a well-tuned RAG solution, text to SQL solution, with the data that they already have, with a large language model that's the frontier model, is usually the go-to scenario.

“Makes sense. So we work with these customers to build custom models for them. But in most cases, a well-tuned RAG solution, text to SQL solution, with the data that they already have, with a large language model that's the frontier model, is usually the go-to scenario.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

02 / evaluation

80% to 90% of all data is unstructured data. And because there weren't a lot of easy ways to process this, it was not necessarily seen as the most usable data, and it is now very usable.

“80% to 90% of all data is unstructured data. And because there weren't a lot of easy ways to process this, it was not necessarily seen as the most usable data, and it is now very usable.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

03 / prediction

figuring out which model, embedding model to use, whether you should use a multimodal embedding model or a text embedding model and so forth. So all of those are incredibly important, but increasingly, we're getting to a point where you can automate many of these things and then reduce the complexity so that a lot of what we used to require practitioners to do can be relatively automated at this point.

“figuring out which model, embedding model to use, whether you should use a multimodal embedding model or a text embedding model and so forth. So all of those are incredibly important, but increasingly, we're getting to a point where you can automate many of these things and then reduce the complexity so that a lot of what we used to require practitioners to do can be relatively automated at this point.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

04 / belief

I wonder how that, going back to the first question about how AGI pilled various organizations are, I wonder how, how do you see that from a competitive dynamic standpoint? Because I think one of the things that's most interesting where, you know, the dice are in the air, so to speak, it feels to me right now in the software market is like, Sure seems like the pace of software development is increasing dramatically.

“I wonder how that, going back to the first question about how AGI pilled various organizations are, I wonder how, how do you see that from a competitive dynamic standpoint? Because I think one of the things that's most interesting where, you know, the dice are in the air, so to speak, it feels to me right now in the software market is like, Sure seems like the pace of software development is increasing dramatically.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

06 / belief

Going back to the models, though, themselves, what's your read right now on this is another thing where I think people have very different intuitions.

“Going back to the models, though, themselves, what's your read right now on this is another thing where I think people have very different intuitions.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

08 / belief

Before going into your expectations for the year ahead, what are you seeing in terms of guardrails. And obviously one big pattern that I think is like very natural to you guys is sourcing answers back to the document or the sort of authoritative place from which it came.

“Before going into your expectations for the year ahead, what are you seeing in terms of guardrails. And obviously one big pattern that I think is like very natural to you guys is sourcing answers back to the document or the sort of authoritative place from which it came.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

10 / belief

I was very surprised by this because I think, man, if I had a, if I'm GE or if I'm 3M or any number of a hundred year old, millions of employees over the generations, companies that have this incredible history and so much data that's accrued that nobody really understands at the company these days.

“I was very surprised by this because I think, man, if I had a, if I'm GE or if I'm 3M or any number of a hundred year old, millions of employees over the generations, companies that have this incredible history and so much data that's accrued that nobody really understands at the company these days.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

13 / uncertainty

We'd go into an environment that we don't know, and then we'll go do a bunch of searches, and then we'll read to create some kind of knowledge.

“We'd go into an environment that we don't know, and then we'll go do a bunch of searches, and then we'll read to create some kind of knowledge.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

14 / belief

In a world where these coding agents are such kind of capable platforms, how do you build new products? And in my mind, it is all about kind of starting with that first and then validating things quickly before you build a product in the first place.

“In a world where these coding agents are such kind of capable platforms, how do you build new products? And in my mind, it is all about kind of starting with that first and then validating things quickly before you build a product in the first place.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

15 / belief

At the point where the models are better able to predict the future than our best super forecasters or even aggregations of super forecasters, that will feel, I think, like a very meaningful shift in what's going on in the world.

“At the point where the models are better able to predict the future than our best super forecasters or even aggregations of super forecasters, that will feel, I think, like a very meaningful shift in what's going on in the world.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

16 / belief

I'm no astronomer, but my experience with platforms in the past and definitely experiences with the Meta platform, formerly known as Facebook, where it was like they came on the scene, they opened up a ton of stuff.

“I'm no astronomer, but my experience with platforms in the past and definitely experiences with the Meta platform, formerly known as Facebook, where it was like they came on the scene, they opened up a ton of stuff.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

17 / evaluation

Anywhere in AI, the differentiation is coming down. That means everyone is doing more and more things to create more and more value, which ultimately is great for the industry and great for consumers and customers.

“Anywhere in AI, the differentiation is coming down. That means everyone is doing more and more things to create more and more value, which ultimately is great for the industry and great for consumers and customers.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

18 / evaluation

I don't think that adoption of this technology requires human-like intelligence because Even for the specific things that these models and these applications do well, that is such high value that we're seeing huge adoption, as you all know, we're seeing huge adoption of AI already.

“I don't think that adoption of this technology requires human-like intelligence because Even for the specific things that these models and these applications do well, that is such high value that we're seeing huge adoption, as you all know, we're seeing huge adoption of AI already.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

19 / commitment

When we started the journey two and a half years ago or so, we heard loud and clear that our customers do not want to move their data out of the Snowflake security boundary.

“When we started the journey two and a half years ago or so, we heard loud and clear that our customers do not want to move their data out of the Snowflake security boundary.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

20 / recommendation

If you go build an agent, the person who asks the question can only get the answer that they're eligible to see and nothing else. This is super obvious and important, but because we have kind of these types of very granular access controls from the ground up as part of the core data platform.

“If you go build an agent, the person who asks the question can only get the answer that they're eligible to see and nothing else. This is super obvious and important, but because we have kind of these types of very granular access controls from the ground up as part of the core data platform.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

21 / recommendation

Starting with the large language models makes a lot of sense. And then over time, as you have more and more data and if you have specific needs, if you have either specific needs because of data or because of cost or throughput, that's when specialized models come into picture.

“Starting with the large language models makes a lot of sense. And then over time, as you have more and more data and if you have specific needs, if you have either specific needs because of data or because of cost or throughput, that's when specialized models come into picture.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

22 / prediction

Coding agents, I think, as you called out, have passed this threshold where because they're a lot more capable, a lot more people are using them.

“Coding agents, I think, as you called out, have passed this threshold where because they're a lot more capable, a lot more people are using them.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

23 / preference

Because that is a bit of a narrative violation relative to what you typically hear is, We can't use that because we'd have to send the data to them and we're not comfortable with that.

“Because that is a bit of a narrative violation relative to what you typically hear is, We can't use that because we'd have to send the data to them and we're not comfortable with that.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

24 / recommendation

You also have different agent platforms that are being used. So for instance, if I'm using Salesforce to manage all of my CRM, maybe I'm going to go build my sales-related experiences with an agent there, but I still want that agent to talk to this other agent I'm building for something else.

“You also have different agent platforms that are being used. So for instance, if I'm using Salesforce to manage all of my CRM, maybe I'm going to go build my sales-related experiences with an agent there, but I still want that agent to talk to this other agent I'm building for something else.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

25 / evaluation

If I think, though, even just about my own ability to search through my own stuff, my own Gmail, my own Google Docs, One of the intuitions I have pretty strongly is if I were to give you full access to my Gmail and give you full access to my Google Docs, you couldn't search through it nearly as well as I can.

“If I think, though, even just about my own ability to search through my own stuff, my own Gmail, my own Google Docs, One of the intuitions I have pretty strongly is if I were to give you full access to my Gmail and give you full access to my Google Docs, you couldn't search through it nearly as well as I can.”
Speaker
Nathan Labenz
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution

26 / evaluation

Yeah, but plus, as a data platform company, I will call out the importance of ultimately all of these capabilities come down to, for any given company, the differentiation is their data.

“Yeah, but plus, as a data platform company, I will call out the importance of ultimately all of these capabilities come down to, for any given company, the differentiation is their data.”
Speaker
Baris Gultekin
Publisher
The Cognitive Revolution
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