00:03 Speaker a
Well, Yahoo Finance has descended once more at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in San Francisco. Now leaning on that AI story along with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswami. Well, sridhar, I'm happy to meet you in person for the change.
00:23 Sridhar Ramaswamy
wonderful. I will contact you. nice to meet you.
00:26 Speaker a
Yes, that's certainly a good thing. you know
00:29 Sridhar Ramaswamy
You just removed your revenue report.
00:31 Speaker a
Yeah. It's a really good quarter for you, but I left thinking that AI would go into a different stage not only for snowflakes but for the industry. Yeah. Is that a correct evaluation?
00:46 Sridhar Ramaswamy
That's a very good review. I think it's slowly but certainly going from hype to reality. And, um, I'm extremely proud of the role we played there. We are at the heart of Enterprise AI. Make AI simple and easy to use. We have 6,000 customers using AI products. And chatbots, something like 30 minutes of work. It's easy to set up. But then you're beginning to see heavyweight applications roll out, such as BlackRock, UM, Thompson Riders and even Snowflakes. And I have an app on my phone that lets you access all the sales information, questions in the sun. I think it's a transformational thing like that is happening.
01:36 Speaker a
Well, it appears your business has accelerated UH in the most recent quarter. What do you attribute it to?
01:44 Sridhar Ramaswamy
We were consistent about this, Brian is at the heart of Snowflake and is always an analytical workload. These are horses that drive snowflakes. With net revenue retention, 125% plus quarter and UH transitions being messy activities, we invest a lot in things like AI-driven movements. With these legacy systems, like legacy pipelines, everything has to be perfect. But AI can automate many such things you know. So we see a robust core with UM with analysis. It's a new product that adds that little vitality to the top, whether it's data engineering or AI. And that's what we want to keep pushing very hard. And what's cool now is that many CIOs and CEOs actually recognize that great data, snowflake data, AI preparatory data has the potential to transform business.
03:15 Speaker a
I spoke with uh jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs. He said he characterized the economy as a stalling rate. Have you ever seen it expressed in AI orders for your business?
03:32 Sridhar Ramaswamy
When it comes to AI, it's constantly being measured. One of the beautiful things about the consumer business is that we are driven by value. We only make money to actually use the product and then get value from it. And it's become so easy to try AI, so people don't have to sign up for a $5 million deal before they can accomplish anything. They can always start small. We don't really see the food stalls of things that our people sign snowflakes and more deals. Well, that remains an important part of the way we operate our business. Honestly, it drives things like our cash flow, like our cash. So, in that respect, we are progressing smoothly.
04:22 Speaker a
The last time I spoke to you, it was a time of deep exploration, it came out. It really shocked the market. And you had some good ideas about it. Where do you think Chinese companies play with AI? As you know, is there another deep moment in the industry?
04:46 Sridhar Ramaswamy
I think it's an incredible time of change when predictions are honestly and really difficult. And if you see even the main UH frontier models, it's like a neck and neck. Hey, it's like Glock catches up. No, the GPD5 is best, but here is another coding model. I think that's a good thing. Well, I see this wider democratic trend occurring, but um, the benefits you can get now are incredible, even if it's for months from being really on the cutting edge, and from being there. There are so many things that will shake up the world of AI.
05:33 Speaker a
Yeah. Could the next big AI development come from overseas companies like China?
05:43 Sridhar Ramaswamy
Innovation can come from anywhere. Well, I think it's a good lesson for all of us that we can't be satisfied. That's the message I give to Snowflake. Because enterprise AI is a big deal. This is back to the original, and I think only delusions will survive. You have to be that to survive now.
06:17 Speaker a
For AI, this conference on the software company has already begun to emerge with the AA story of an almost existential crisis. So, I think that's exaggerated, but even so, how do you see the future of software companies for AI? What is the magnitude of the threat?
06:45 Sridhar Ramaswamy
Software and services know that they are deeply affected by AI. There is no doubt about that. why? Something, you know, I'm a modest programmer and it's not great, but if I have to do something a little meaningful, it'll take a few weeks to do this. If you have a concept, you can knock it out with 2 hours of wide coding without really needing to know like the very core details. Therefore, the ability to quickly develop applications is also very surprising. So I think there is definitely a change in gravity to the data. Whether it's the actual data about what happened in the world, whether it's a call transcript or how your business went, that's the goal. And that's what drives us momentum. Because the only other thing you can do on the top is an explosion of innovation.
08:00 Speaker a
I think what you're looking at is what investors are doing is taking some of these insights and essentially unfolding them infinitely.
08:08 Sridhar Ramaswamy
Therefore, some of these software stocks are currently trading at record low valuations. You know, there are definitely cases where some investors are taking these early nuggets and just rolling out to move forward. Well, this is a dynamic world. The software company is not sitting still. They know how they can confuse themselves and how they can create new services. But what I'm very confident about is this very old and it's like the internet for a while. Well, exactly how that unfolds, I think it's really hard to call.
08:49 Speaker a
Can they understand that? So I look at some of the world's largest software companies. What do they do? Do they look like they're five years from now?
09:00 Sridhar Ramaswamy
Yes, I think they know, first of all, like I said, Data Foundation is important. It's a big deal for a customer with 1 million customers who have that data to consume it in a way that is appropriate for those who consume it. That's not a matter of discussion. Well, you can have four different interfaces for that data, but you can keep the data in one place. I think you'll see a lot of flexible UI paradigms. The UI is always really difficult to create. It's slow, painful, and the same with apps, like building a web page. I think we are entering a world where you are merely limited by your imagination in regards to such things. So you'll see a lot of innovation, you know. I think more and more software companies will become like snowflakes with a core data layer. And there's a lot they'll add above, but exposing the agent functionality here is something we can do with our data. Well, I think they'll try just as hard as they do, as there's nothing like an existential threat to drive innovation in your own business model.
10:24 Speaker a
No, that's a really good point. Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswami. I'm happy to meet you in person for the change.
10:30 Sridhar Ramaswamy
Ryan, I'm happy to meet you. thank you.
