Snowflake’s CEO says the biggest software companies may be reduced to just data sources.
“The big model manufacturers want to create a world where all the data from all the companies is easily available,” Sridhar Ramaswamy said on last week’s episode of Alex Kantrowitz’s Big Tech Podcast. “Everything else, the world, is just a stupid data pipe feeding into that big brain.”
Before becoming Snowflake’s CEO in 2024, Ramaswamy was a partner at Greylock Ventures and co-founder of AI search startup Neeva, which was acquired by Snowflake.
Ramaswamy added that Snowflake needs to operate on the “fear” that people will stop using AI agents developed by software companies and instead seek comprehensive agents with data from Snowflake and everywhere else.
He said his solution is to put customers in the driver’s seat and allow them to decide how to access their data, either directly through their own agents or through products like ChatGPT.
In recent months, AI Labs has evolved from a source of AI infrastructure to a software provider itself. OpenAI is entering the sales, support, and document analysis markets, threatening incumbents like Salesforce and Oracle.
In a podcast published last week, Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Anish Acharya said software companies are facing unnecessary punishment from Wall Street over concerns that AI will take over the industry. The VC said legacy software cannot be easily replaced because there is no value in using AI for every business function.
Software accounts for 8 to 12 percent of a company’s expenses, he said, and Vibe coding for building a company’s resource planning and payroll tools can only save about 10 percent. Instead, companies should focus on big-ticket items such as core business development and other cost optimization.
Ramaswamy and Acharya’s comments mark a tough start to the month for software stocks. under Technology and broader markets. The selloff began when already wary investors panicked. Anthropic’s new AI toolscan perform a variety of clerical tasks for people working in the legal industry.
