DATA TRENDS 2024

7 Ways Leading Organizations Are Building Toward Advanced AI Success

DATA TRENDS 2024

TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Executive Summary................................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction: Advancing in the AI Age................................................................................................................. 5
Cementing the Data Foundation........................................................................................................................... 7
Trend One: Python Is the Language of Choice for AI Programming................................................... 8
Trend Two: Enterprises Are Tapping Their Unstructured Data............................................................. 9
Trend Three: Enterprises Are Getting More Granular in Their Data Governance.......................... 10
AI Scales With Apps................................................................................................................................................ 12
Trend One: The Democratization of AI Is Here...................................................................................... 13
Trend Two: The LLM Explosion Is Happening Now—Probably at Your Office ............................... 14
Trend Three: The Chatbot Is on the Rise................................................................................................. 15
Trend Four: Enterprises Want Apps and Data Within a Unified Data Platform............................. 16
From Foundation to Elevation.............................................................................................................................. 17
Next Steps.................................................................................................................................................................. 18
Appendix: Methodology........................................................................................................................................ 19

DATA TRENDS 2024 2

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
We looked at how more than 9,000 Snowflake accounts adopted features and capabilities of the Data Cloud over the previous
fiscal year to reveal trends, both in terms of the foundational development of data infrastructure and those users’ first moves
into advanced AI. Generally, we compared January 2023 to January 2024 to align with Snowflake’s fiscal year, except in cases
where features went into public preview during the year. In those cases, we compared the first full month in public preview to
January 2024. For the full methodology, see the appendix.
Highlights from this report include:

FIRMING UP THE DATA FOUNDATION

1 Python is the language of choice for AI programming. With its 3 Enterprises are getting fine-grained about their data governance.
ease of use, active community and ecosystem of libraries and We’re seeing not just more governance measures applied to data;
frameworks, Python use grew 571%, considerably more than we’re seeing a more refined approach as organizations embrace
any other language year over year. Python skills will be increasingly a wide range of tagging standards and features. The takeaway:
essential to development teams as they venture into advanced AI. While usage of every data governance feature rose 70%-100%,
the number of queries against protected objects is up 142%.
2 Enterprises are finally tapping their unstructured data. Most
Governance is not about locking down your data, it’s about making
data—as much as 90% by some estimates—is unstructured videos,
it more available for secure, authorized uses, and we’re seeing
documents and more. We saw processing of unstructured data grow
exactly that.
by 123%. That’s good news for many uses, not the least of which is
advanced AI. Proprietary data will give large language models their
edge, so unlocking that underutilized 90% has huge value.

DATA TRENDS 2024 3

MAKING AI ACCESSIBLE
1 The democratization of AI is here. A major promise of AI is that it will
make technology available to less technical users. We’ve empowered
that through the machine learning functions of Snowflake Cortex, and
since public preview of key features began in June 2023, we’ve seen
the number of active accounts adopting ML-based functions grow by
67%. That opens up more possibilities because data scientists and other
experts are no longer a bottleneck.

2 The LLM explosion is happening now—probably at your office. What

bottleneck? In the last fiscal year in the Streamlit developer community,
we saw 20,076 unique developers work on 33,143 LLM-powered apps.
That means that the future filled with the power of AI is here. It may not
be evenly distributed yet, but it’s here.

3 The chatbot is on the rise. Single-text input LLM apps may be easier to
make, but they don’t allow refinement through natural conversation. For
that you need chatbots, and increasingly that’s what the devs are making.
From May 2023 through January 2024 in the Streamlit community,
chatbots went from 18% of LLM apps to 46%. And climbing.

4 Enterprises want apps and data within a unified data platform. We

make it possible for users to build applications within our data platform,
where their data resides, via the Snowflake Native App Framework.
Maybe it’s the ease of use or the single source of truth. Maybe it’s the
security and governance advantages. But the data shows that people
want to bring the work to the data. The number of Snowflake Native
Apps grew 311%, and the use of those apps is up 96%, based on January
2024 utilization compared to July 2023 (Snowflake Native Apps went
into public preview on June 27, 2023).

DATA TRENDS 2024 4

ADVANCING IN THE AI AGE
We’re now a year and a half into the generative AI era, and things are only accelerating. OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT and
then GPT-4, Meta’s decision to open source Llama and Llama 2, and a host of other announcements and innovations
around the application of advanced AI have stirred more excitement and driven real progress in the development and
enterprise adoption of large language models.

Tremendous opportunities and challenges lie ahead, and as we analyzed use of the Snowflake Data Cloud to understand
the latest trends around data and technology, our chief interest was around how enterprises are preparing for an unfolding
era in which advanced AI accelerates and transforms how they do business.

The Snowflake Data Cloud encompasses data, models and applications from thousands of organizations across many
industries. Looking at how they work within the platform, including which features they use, paints a vivid picture of the
decisions being made to deal with current challenges and prepare for future success.

DATA TRENDS 2024 5

A lot of industry research surveys executives and practitioners, asking them to estimate
things such as what percentage of their data is unstructured, or to describe how
The generative AI era does not call for
confident they feel about their approach to data governance. a fundamental shift in data strategy.
This report didn’t ask anyone’s opinion. Instead, we looked at how enterprises
worldwide are making decisions and applying their resources to leverage their data.
It calls for an acceleration of the trend
Through that lens, a picture emerges about how the modern, data-forward enterprise
toward breaking down silos and opening
is shaping its data strategy on the cusp of an AI revolution. In short, business and
technology leaders at these organizations are preparing for the future. They are
access to data sources wherever they
taking initial steps into the world of large language models and generative AI. More might be in the organization.”
importantly, they are fortifying their data foundation.

While the specific technologies around advanced AI—the algorithms and apps—are —JENNIFER BELISSENT
powerful, they don’t work alone. To be successful, a business must build the shiny, Principal Data Strategist, in Snowflake Data + AI Predictions 2024
new AI technology on top of a solid stack of organizational practices and technologies
to ensure a company’s data is available, secure and properly governed. In other words,
the LLM is the dessert, while a solid data infrastructure is the main course.

In our predictions report for 2024, our in-house experts advised that the proper
response to the new AI age is not to desperately create a new data strategy, but to
accelerate the same solid, thoughtful practices you were following before you ever
heard of ChatGPT.

When we look at how Snowflake users are working with their data, we see exactly
that: a focus on silo-busting, refining governance practices, and finally coming to grips
with the flood of unstructured data. For starters.

DATA TRENDS 2024 6

CEMENTING THE
DATA FOUNDATION
Organizations are doing a lot to make more data securely, appropriately
available to today’s tools and applications as well as tomorrow’s (or
next week’s) AI advance. At the foundation layer, we’ve identified the
following three trends as significant in the past year.

On their own, each of these trends is a singular data point about

how IT organizations are handling various challenges. Taken together,
they suggest a larger story about how CIOs, CTOs and CDOs are
modernizing their organizations, embracing AI experimentation, solving
data problems and driving resource-stretching efficiencies—all necessary
steps to meet the opportunities of advanced AI head-on.

DATA TRENDS 2024 7

TREND ONE:
PYTHON IS THE LANGUAGE OF AI/ML IS GROWING
CHOICE FOR AI PROGRAMMING WITH PYTHON
As Python use skyrockets in Snowpark,
Developers are able to work with a variety of Overall, Python lets devs focus on the problem, usage of some of the most popular
programming languages in Snowflake, and it’s with not the language. They can work fast, accelerating
AI/ML open source Python libraries
interest that we note which languages are growing prototyping and experimentation—and therefore
in popularity. In the past year, Python has surged. overall learning as dev teams make early forays into in Snowpark has increased by 335%,
cutting-edge AI projects. And in the Snowflake Data including:
Python has a lot going for it, including:
Cloud, devs are seriously embracing Python.
• It’s easy to learn and read, letting developers SCIKIT-LEARN IS UP XGBOOST IS UP
In Snowpark, which expands programmability in
focus on solving AI problems rather than parsing
abstract syntax.

• It has a vast ecosystem of libraries and frameworks

Snowflake, Python use grew considerably faster
than both Java and Scala in the last fiscal year:
Python grew by 571%, while Scala grew by 387%
474% 357%
that simplify potentially daunting AI tasks, from and Java grew 131%.
implementation of neural networks to natural
Developers are bringing more AI/ML
language processing. work to Snowflake, because they need
• It has a big, active community of contributors, a unified data platform and access to
which accelerates learning and problem-solving. +571% huge amounts of data used to build,
• It’s flexible and portable, so developers can deploy train and run advanced models. But
AI applications across different platforms, systems we believe the increase represents
and environments.
+387% not only a shift of existing work to
• Its extensive data-handling capabilities make it our platform, but a net increase in
easy to manipulate data, which is a core challenge
experimentation with advanced AI.
of any AI/ML project.

+131%
PYTHON SCALA JAVA
AI-friendly Python significantly outpaced Scala and
Java growth in the Data Cloud.

DATA TRENDS 2024 8

TREND TWO:
ENTERPRISES ARE FINALLY TAPPING
THEIR UNSTRUCTURED DATA
Most data is unstructured, and most enterprises Despite the challenges, Snowflake users are getting
struggle to do much with it. This is not a problem value out of unstructured data, especially with
that’s going to go away. According to IDC, 90% of the growth of AI/ML. These data types are being PROCESSING OF
the data generated by organizations in 2022 was processed with Python, Java and Scala, languages
unstructured.1 commonly used by data engineers, data scientists UNSTRUCTURED DATA

+123 %
and app developers. The suite of languages for
Extracting value from that data has been a tech
unstructured data processing became publicly
challenge for years, exacerbated by the near-
available in public preview or general availability
simultaneous arrivals of smartphones and social
on June 27, 2023.
media, and complicated by evolving regulatory regimes
and privacy practices that govern all of an enterprise’s Given that Python in particular is the language of
data, structured or not. That last point is important; choice for many developers, data engineers and data
even as automation and artificial intelligence help us scientists, its fast-growing adoption suggests that FROM JULY 2023 TO JAN. 2024
extract meaning from unstructured data, the actual these unstructured data workflows are not just for
management of it becomes more difficult. building data pipelines, but also involve AI applications
and ML models.

+675%
1. IDC White Paper, sponsored by Box, “Untapped Value: What Every Executive Needs to Know About Unstructured Data,” IDC #US51128223, Aug 2023

DATA TRENDS 2024 9

TREND THREE:
ENTERPRISES ARE MORE
GRANULAR IN THEIR
DATA GOVERNANCE
The last foundational trend is certainly not the least. Governance is absolutely
essential to data strategy broadly, and AI strategy in particular. The outputs of LLMs
and generative AI can be inaccurate or inappropriate, and a strong governance
regime helps limit negative surprises.

In last year’s trends report, we noted that with both data regulations and consumer
privacy concerns on the rise, we had seen increased adoption of data governance
features. In short, we saw that our users were applying more tags governing access
and use of their data, meaning that they were ensuring that necessary audiences
could make use of their data while restricting unauthorized user access. This year,
that trend continues and in fact deepens.

We’ve seen significant increased adoption of governance features in a way

that indicates not merely restriction, but control. The wide embrace of multiple
governance features suggests that users want granular control over data to make
it appropriately available to more users, for more use cases. This refined control is
necessary to responsibly unlock the value of sensitive data.

DATA TRENDS 2024 10

 Among the indicators of a more granular approach That last stat is particularly significant. There’s a
to data use, we saw use of the following governance popular misconception that governance is about
features rise year over year: saying no, that it slows down or limits data innovation.
While good governance is meant to put the brakes on
• The number of tags applied to an object rose 72%.
genuinely unsafe or inappropriate activities, it’s also
• The number of objects with a directly assigned tag an enabler of effective, responsible data usage. We’re
is up almost 80%. seeing more and more governance through the use
of tags and masking policies, but the amount of work
• The number of applied masking or row-access
being done with this more carefully governed data is
policies increased 98%.
rising rapidly.
• The number of columns with an assigned masking
We expect these trends to continue as more and
policy grew 97%.
more enterprises improve how they govern their data,
• The cumulative number of queries run against increase their responsible usage of it, and reap the
policy-protected objects is up 142%. benefits that data provides to their bottom line.

CUMULATIVE NUMBER OF JOBS RUN

AGAINST POLICY-PROTECTED OBJECTS,

+142 %

DATA TRENDS 2024 11

AI SCALES WITH APPS
While the establishment of a solid data platform and a strategy that
breaks down silos and finds efficiencies has been a well-understood
goal for years, AI is still mostly untapped by the enterprise. In the
year that LLMs and generative AI have been in the media glare, many
enterprises have begun to experiment, launching initial projects.

Within the Snowflake Data Cloud and the Streamlit community,

we’re able to measure activity in the LLM space and around
application development, and throughout 2023 we saw great
enthusiasm to get to work.

As with the foundational section, we’ve identified four trends in

these early days of advanced AI.

A challenge of measuring trends in the enterprise AI space is that

there’s no precedent. In some cases, we made features available
during 2023, so we don’t have years of previous data to compare.
What we have seen is enthusiastic uptake, and patterns of
preference that we think point the way for these early days.

DATA TRENDS 2024 12

TREND ONE:
THE DEMOCRATIZATION
OF AI IS HERE
A significant promise of LLMs and generative AI is that • The number of active accounts using ML-based +90%
you don’t have to be a highly trained data scientist functions2 grew 67% between July 2023 (the first
to work with them. Natural language interfaces mean full month after public preview) and January 2024.
that you can talk to the data—or rather, the app that That surge of initial growth, sustained over the +67%
sits on top of the data—like a human, and the data/app remaining six months of the fiscal year, indicates
will deliver its answers in a reasonable approximation the enthusiasm for, and the utility of, these
of human conversation, too. That amounts to a “democratizing” functions.
“democratization of AI,” as the tech marketers like
• Comparing July 2023 to January 2024, monthly
to say. And it’s here.
usage grew 90%.
While this year’s report does not have year-over-year
These are early days, and of course that growth surge
statistics, what we saw in 2023 was tremendous,
starts from a relatively small initial point, but we’re
widespread enthusiasm. The fast adoption of the
excited to see sustained and growing interest in tools
ML-based functions available in Snowflake Cortex
that put more and more of the power of advanced JULY 2023 JAN 2024
shows how fast AI can happen when there is a solid
AI into the hands of less-technical users. This frees USAGE ACCOUNTS
foundation of data in place. These functions make
the relatively small (and overwhelmed) teams of data
it easier for those who aren’t data scientists to work
scientists from being a bottleneck, and allows those Since ML-based functions became available in late June,
with machine learning algorithms. more adoption by user accounts, and rising overall usage,
experts to concentrate on the most complex and high-
indicate early steps toward the democratization of AI.
value projects.
Note: Growth was not linear. This graphic illustrates the difference
between the start and end points.

2. ML-based functions evaluated for this report include anomaly detection, forecasting and contribution explorer, which all went into public preview on June 27, 2023.
Anomaly detection and forecasting were subsequently announced into general availability on Dec. 18, 2023.

DATA TRENDS 2024 13

TREND TWO:
THE LLM EXPLOSION IS HAPPENING NOW—
PROBABLY AT YOUR OFFICE
When generative AI and LLMs became the singular topic of tech conversations a
year and a half ago, we were assured that this technology would be everywhere,
infiltrating every aspect of how we live and work. We can’t say that this reality has

20,076
fully materialized yet, but we’re definitely seeing a lot of effort to get us there ASAP.

• Within the Streamlit developer community, between April 27, 2023, and Jan. 31,
2024, we saw 20,076 unique developers work on 33,143 LLM-powered apps
(this includes apps that are still in development).

• Historically, the Streamlit community has had a large percentage of non-

corporate users, so we wondered if this massive surge might mostly be solo DEVS WORKED ON
experimentation. But in a survey of 1,479 respondents, nearly 65% said their

33,143
LLM projects were for work.

And it seems that these developers are steadily improving their creations. Vector
databases and vector search help improve the creativity and utility of an LLM app
by making connections between related concepts rather than requiring exact word
matches. The result is smarter, more accurate outputs, faster.
LLM-POWERED APPS IN

9 MONTHS

DATA TRENDS 2024 14

TREND THREE:
THE CHATBOT IS ON THE RISE
A SNAPSHOT OF
The great thing about a conversational interface is From that point, the single-input line trended down DEV CONCERNS
that you can have a conversation. We’ve seen in and the chatbot line rose. By the end of January 2024,
recent months a decided shift from the easy-to-build, chatbots accounted for 46% of LLM apps, with single- In a community-wide survey, more
straightforward single-text-input LLM toward the input apps comprising 54%. than 980 Streamlit users selected
chatbot, which allows refinement through iterative
The steady climb of the chatbot probably does not their top concern, from a list of four
text input.
represent a shift in the market’s appetite for LLM common worries, about working with
Looking again at the more than 20,000 LLM-powered apps. More likely, developers are increasingly able
LLMs. The results were:
apps being developed with Streamlit, we see a definite to make more complex chatbot apps to offer greater
direction for the chatbot, and it’s up. In the week versatility and interactivity to meet both business
starting April 30, 2023, single-text-input apps peaked needs and user expectations. TRUST:
at 82% of all LLM apps built with Streamlit, leaving Is the LLM response accurate?
18% for the chatbots.
36%
ARE CHATBOTS THE FUTURE? PRIVACY: Is my data safe?

80% 28%
WEEKLY % OF THE TOTAL USAGE

COST: AI ain’t cheap!

19%
60%

40%
SKILLS: I’m still learning

20%
17%
0%
MAY JUN JUL AUG SEPT OCT NOV DEC JAN
2024
SINGLE TEXT INPUT CHATBOT

DATA TRENDS 2024 15

TREND FOUR:
ENTERPRISES WANT APPS
AND DATA WITHIN A UNIFIED
DATA PLATFORM FOR BETTER CYBERSECURITY WORK IS
MIGRATING TO THE DATA
SECURITY AND GOVERNANCE PLATFORM
Underscoring the trend to bring work
You don’t have to build your LLM application on the The early answer appears to be “Yes.” The Native App
to the data, we’re seeing a rise of
same platform as your data, but there are significant Framework went into public preview on June 27,
advantages to doing so. By having unified data 2023. Comparing July 2023 to January 2024: cybersecurity workloads being brought
governance and not having to move data across
• We’ve seen 311% growth in the number of
to the Snowflake Data Cloud.
compute environments, application development
Snowflake Native Apps published.
is faster, deployment is easier, and operational • For cybersecurity connected
maintenance costs are lower. • We saw 147% growth in installation/adoption
apps, where a SaaS vendor stores
of these applications.
Therefore, to continue practicing what we preach and processes data in the end
about bringing the work to the data, rather than • Usage of these apps grew 96%.
consumer’s Snowflake instance,
vice versa, we introduced the Snowflake Native App
What this means is that, given the choice, users want the average number of connected
Framework in 2023.
to build applications within their data platform—where
the data is—rather than export copies of the data to
accounts increased 72% year
Snowflake Native Apps let users deploy applications
within the Data Cloud, leveraging the Snowflake external technologies. over year.
platform to run all three layers of the app, including
data, processing and user interface. But the question
And frankly, it makes sense. We’ve seen that a strong This tells us that cybersecurity teams
data foundation prepares an organization to succeed
is, does anyone actually want that? see the value of doing security work
with AI. That enterprises would want to work within
a solid data platform to create their applications is an within their company’s unified data
extension of that principle. We believe this will soon platform, rather than through externally
be an industry-wide baseline. managed applications.

DATA TRENDS 2024 16

 FROM FOUNDATION
TO ELEVATION
IT teams are used to how much work occurs on the backend to provide a positive,
painless experience. The simplest application hides a lot of complexity. That’s
definitely true with LLMs and generative AI. We’re seeing that organizations
understand this and are fortifying their data foundation even as they make their
first forays into cutting-edge AI.

Some of the foundational trends we’re seeing apply directly to AI: robust, refined
governance; increased use of Python; coming to grips with the vast quantities of
unstructured data. Others speak to a general excellence and willingness to adopt new
practices to accelerate time to value, such as the growth of serverless computing.

As organizations progressively improve their foundation, they pave the way for
successful AI initiatives that will deliver reliable, ethical, secure and impactful results.
And the trends we’re seeing in the AI and applications spaces suggest progress is
being made.

Organizations are picking their models, creating more complex LLM applications,
making AI more available to a wider range of users, and reaping the benefits of a
unified data platform. There has been a lot of hype around the transformational
potential of AI, but judging from what we’re seeing in the Data Cloud, the frenzied
fanfare is beginning to materialize into concrete results.

DATA TRENDS 2024 17

NEXT STEPS
Learn more about how Snowflake can help you improve your data foundation
and launch successful AI initiatives.

SNOWFLAKE FOR AI AND ML SNOWFLAKE HORIZON

See how you can securely build and deploy LLMs and ML models Snowflake’s built-in governance solution provides a unified set
in the Data Cloud. of compliance, security, privacy, interoperability and access
capabilities in the Data Cloud.
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE

SNOWPARK
Runtimes and libraries that securely deploy and process Python STREAMLIT IN SNOWFLAKE
and other programming languages in Snowflake. Turn data and ML models into interactive apps with Python—
now all in Snowflake.
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE

18
APPENDIX:
METHODOLOGY
The Snowflake Data Trends Report 2024 is generated from fully aggregated,
anonymized data detailing usage of the Snowflake Data Cloud and its integrated
features and tools. In this report, we examine patterns and trends in data and AI
adoption across more than 9,000 global Snowflake accounts. The Snowflake Data
Cloud provides insight into the state of data and AI, including which technologies
are the fastest growing. Note that usage attributable to internal consumption, if
any, has been removed and is not reflected in any of the metrics contained herein.
The accounts and usage reflected in this report represent every major industry
and include both longtime Snowflake users and others who only recently joined
the Data Cloud.

Except where noted in the text, the data in this report compares monthly
averages from January 2024 (represented as “this year”) to averages in January
2023 (“last year”). When compared, this is depicted as “year over year” growth
to align with Snowflake’s fiscal year end, though the figures themselves are only
representative of January figures to calculate growth.

When possible, we have provided these year-over-year comparisons to showcase

growth trends over time. Where data was drawn from Snowflake features that
became publicly available after the start of the fiscal year, data was collected
and compared as of the first full month after which the feature became available
in public preview, and that date is noted in the text. Notably, growth figures for
features moving into public preview are expected to be considerably higher,
as private previews are limited in scope and necessarily restricted to select
Snowflake customers.

DATA TRENDS 2024 19

 ABOUT SNOWFLAKE
Snowflake enables every organization to mobilize their data with Snowflake’s Data Cloud. Customers use the Data Cloud to
unite siloed data, discover and securely share data, and execute diverse artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML) and
analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single data experience that spans multiple clouds and
geographies. Thousands of customers across many industries, including 691 of the 2023 Forbes Global 2000 (G2K) as of
January 31, 2024, use the Snowflake Data Cloud to power their businesses.
Learn more at snowflake.com

© 2024 Snowflake Inc. All rights reserved. Snowflake, the Snowflake logo, and all other Snowflake product, feature and service names mentioned herein
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herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). Snowflake may not be associated with, or be
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