Snowflake Summit earns its reputation year after year. Whether you’ve been making the pilgrimage to San Francisco since the early days or you’re heading to Moscone for the first time this June, there’s a reason it keeps pulling the best data and AI minds in the industry together: the conversations here move the needle.
This year’s theme — Making AI Real for Business — signals a genuine shift in what the community is ready to talk about: production-grade AI, with the governance, context, and infrastructure that enterprise organizations need to trust it at scale.
With 500+ sessions across 12 tracks, the catalog can seem overwhelming. So we’ve gone through it and pulled out the sessions we think are worth your time, whether you’re a data leader mapping strategy for the next 18 months or a practitioner who needs to know what’s going to work in the real world.
Some of these sessions are presented or co-sponsored by Atlan, but the majority is simply the conversations we’re most excited to be in the room for.
Want to plan your week before you arrive? Build your personalized Summit agenda, or keep reading for our picks, in order of when they happen.
Monday, June 1
Permalink to “Monday, June 1”Aviva’s Internal Marketplace Playbook: From 29 Silos to One Source of Truth
Permalink to “Aviva’s Internal Marketplace Playbook: From 29 Silos to One Source of Truth”Speakers: Libby Hickey, Head of Data Platforms & Enablement, Aviva; Andy McPhee, Director of Data Engineering, Aviva
Date & Time: Monday, June 1 | 1:00–1:45 PM PT
What it is: Aviva shares how they used Snowflake’s Internal Marketplace to consolidate 29 data product silos into a single governed source of truth, and built the operating model to sustain it.
Why it matters: The data silo problem is nearly universal at enterprise scale, but the playbook for solving it is not. This session is valuable because it isn’t theoretical. Aviva is walking through real decisions made inside a large, regulated financial services organization. If your team is still relitigating data access and ownership questions it had two years ago, this one’s worth your time.
Context, Governance, Infrastructure: The Stack AI Data Agents Don’t Have
Permalink to “Context, Governance, Infrastructure: The Stack AI Data Agents Don’t Have”Speakers: Ra Raman, Sr. Director, Enterprise Data & AI, Zscaler; Pradnesh Patil, Co-founder & CEO, Altimate AI
Date & Time: Monday, June 1 | 2:30–2:50 PM PT
What it is: A direct examination of why AI agents in production keep falling short. Their argument? Three missing pieces are almost always to blame: context, governance, and the infrastructure to support both at scale.
Why it matters: Almost every organization is deploying AI agents right now. Far fewer are deploying ones that hold up under real enterprise conditions. This session names the gap precisely and gets specific about what filling it actually requires. It will be useful for practitioners building the systems and leaders who need to know what questions to ask about them.
Context Is the New Code: AI Engineering with Snowflake Cortex AI
Permalink to “Context Is the New Code: AI Engineering with Snowflake Cortex AI”Speakers: Karthik Raman, Head of Snowflake Practice, LTM; Pallavi Sharma, Sr. Data Cloud Architect – Partners, Snowflake
Date & Time: Monday, June 1 | 3:30–3:50 PM PT
What it is: A practical session on encoding business and technical context so that Snowflake Cortex AI can generate reliable, enterprise-grade data workflows, not just plausible-sounding ones.
Why it matters: The shift from prompt engineering to context engineering is real and accelerating. This session shows what that looks like inside Snowflake’s stack in concrete terms. Catch this session before the later afternoon sessions start picking up steam.
WTF is the Enterprise Context Layer — Demystified and Demoed (Presented by Atlan)
Permalink to “WTF is the Enterprise Context Layer — Demystified and Demoed (Presented by Atlan)”Speaker: Prukalpa Sankar, Co-founder & Co-CEO, Atlan
Date & Time: Monday, June 1 | 4:00–4:45 PM PT
What it is: Atlan Co-founder Prukalpa Sankar tackles one of the most-asked and least-clearly-answered questions in enterprise data right now: what is the context layer, and what does it actually do?
Why it matters: “Context layer” is quickly becoming one of those terms that everyone uses but no one defines the same way. This session cuts through the noise with a live demo that makes it concrete rather than conceptual. If you’ve spent the day in back-to-back vendor conversations where the terminology started blurring together, this is a can’t-miss session.
Tuesday, June 2
Permalink to “Tuesday, June 2”Open Data Infrastructure: The Next Era of Data Architecture
Permalink to “Open Data Infrastructure: The Next Era of Data Architecture”Speakers: George Fraser, CEO & Co-founder, Fivetran; Tristan Handy, CEO, dbt Labs
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 2 | 11:30 AM–12:15 PM PT
What it is: Two of the most influential voices in the modern data stack make the case for open infrastructure formats. This session will explore how they preserve interoperability, prevent lock-in, and scale for analytics and AI alike.
Why it matters: With Snowflake, dbt, and Fivetran all converging on open standards like Iceberg, this will provide a much-needed read on where the foundational layer of the data stack is heading. Strategic for leaders thinking about architecture decisions; practically relevant for engineers who’ll be the ones implementing them.
When the Interface Is an Agent: Reimagining Your Customer Context Layer
Permalink to “When the Interface Is an Agent: Reimagining Your Customer Context Layer”Speaker: Yali Sassoon, CTO, Snowplow
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 2 | 12:30–12:50 PM PT
What it is: Behavioral intelligence gives you the complete picture of how customers actually interact with your products. This session will look at how it can power customer-facing AI agents built on Snowflake.
Why it matters: Most AI agent conversations this week will be about internal workflows. This one flips to the customer-facing side and asks what it takes to build agents that understand who they’re talking to. Relevant for any organization where customer experience is downstream of a data problem.
Context Layer? Semantic Layer? Ontology? Knowledge Graph? A Spicy Debate (Presented by Atlan)
Permalink to “Context Layer? Semantic Layer? Ontology? Knowledge Graph? A Spicy Debate (Presented by Atlan)”Speakers: Jessica Talisman, Principal, Ontology Pipeline; Cindi Howson, Chief Data & AI Strategy Officer, ThoughtSpot; Prukalpa Sankar, Co-founder & Co-CEO, Atlan; Austin Kronz, Director of AI & Data Strategy, Atlan
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 2 | 1:00–1:20 PM PT
What it is: If you liked Atlan’s Great Data Debate (or if you missed it and want to see what the hype is about), you’ll love this. We’re running it back with a deliberately provocative session that puts the competing frameworks for “contextualizing” enterprise data in the same room so the experts can duke it out for which is best.
Why it matters: If you’ve ever sat in a meeting where the terms semantic layer, ontology, knowledge graph, and context layer were all used interchangeably — and felt like you weren’t supposed to admit you weren’t sure they were different — this one’s for you. Expect a lively exchange and some hard-won clarity.
The Future of Financial Services: Agents with Industry Context and Connectivity
Permalink to “The Future of Financial Services: Agents with Industry Context and Connectivity”Speakers: Rinesh Patel, Global Head of Financial Services, Snowflake; Sachin Mehta, EVP & Chief Data Product Officer, US Bank; Mallik Yemme, Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 2 | 2:00–2:45 PM PT
What it is: A session exploring how context-aware, connected AI is reshaping financial services operations, and why becoming “agent-native” is the industry’s next strategic imperative.
Why it matters: This panel is sure to be grounded in real institutional constraints, not aspirational roadmaps. It’s worth your time even if you’re not in financial services, since the governance and connectivity challenges translate directly to most large enterprise environments.
The Enterprise Context Layer: Atlan’s Thesis, Workday’s Proof in Production (Presented by Atlan)
Permalink to “The Enterprise Context Layer: Atlan’s Thesis, Workday’s Proof in Production (Presented by Atlan)”Speakers: Joe DosSantos, VP Enterprise Data & Analytics, Workday; Prukalpa Sankar, Co-founder & Co-CEO, Atlan
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 2 | 3:00–3:45 PM PT
What it is: There’s no shortage of organizations talking about context layers. But actually executing them is another story. In this session, Joe DosSantos will share how Workday has deployed the context layer in production, with real architecture decisions, tradeoffs, and outcomes to show for it.
Why it matters: Proof points from organizations operating at Workday’s scale and complexity are rare and invaluable. If you’re evaluating how context fits into your own data platform strategy, this is one of the higher-signal sessions of the week.
Your AI Strategy Has a Context Problem. Orchestration Solves It
Permalink to “Your AI Strategy Has a Context Problem. Orchestration Solves It”Speaker: Steve Hillion, SVP of Data and AI, Astronomer
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 2 | 3:00–3:20 PM PT
What it is: Production AI systems fail not because of bad models, but because of missing context. This session will explore why orchestration is the mechanism for accumulating and applying that context reliably over time, and the architectural pattern that makes it possible.
Why it matters: If you’re on the engineering side and are interested in the infrastructure angle versus the platform strategy angle, this is the session for you. Astronomer’s framing of context-through-orchestration offers a useful counterpoint to the data-catalog-centric view you may hear elsewhere this week.
Wednesday, June 3
Permalink to “Wednesday, June 3”Context Layer in Practice: How Workday Builds Trustworthy AI Agents (Presented by Atlan)
Permalink to “Context Layer in Practice: How Workday Builds Trustworthy AI Agents (Presented by Atlan)”Speakers: Jon Chen, Director of Enterprise AI/ML Solutions, Workday; Austin Kronz, Director of AI & Data Strategy, Atlan
Date & Time: Wednesday, June 3 | 12:30–12:50 PM PT
What it is: A follow-on to Tuesday’s Workday session, going deeper into the AI agent implementation. We’ll focus specifically on how Workday uses the context layer to make agents reliable and auditable in production.
Why it matters: “Trustworthy AI” can mean almost anything at the strategy level. This session gets into the mechanics: what does it actually mean to build an agent you can audit, explain, and trust with enterprise workflows? Workday’s AI team has been doing the work, and now they’ll share what they’ve learned.
Thursday, June 4
Permalink to “Thursday, June 4”A Framework for Assessing and Improving AI Readiness
Permalink to “A Framework for Assessing and Improving AI Readiness”Speakers: Mark Huberty, Principal Data Scientist, Snowflake; Tyler Richards, Staff Data Scientist, Snowflake
Date & Time: Thursday, June 4 | 11:30 AM–12:15 PM PT
What it is: A practical framework from Snowflake’s data science team for evaluating whether your data is actually ready for AI. This session will cover data reliability, semantic clarity, governance, and security.
Why it matters: Most AI readiness conversations stay at the strategy level. This one gets diagnostic. If you want to leave Summit with a concrete way to assess where your organization actually stands (not just where you’d like to be), make sure to add this to your agenda.
3 Essentials for Building Winning AI Projects
Permalink to “3 Essentials for Building Winning AI Projects”Speakers: Sanjeev Mohan, Principal, Sanjmo; Navita Sood, Director of Product Marketing, Data & AI, Cloudera
Date & Time: Thursday, June 4 | 1:30–1:50 PM PT
What it is: A distillation of what separates successful enterprise AI projects from the ones that stall. This session will focus on cross-ecosystem data connectivity, trusted governance, and real-time pipelines for fresh, reliable knowledge.
Why it matters: Sanjeev Mohan is well known in the data governance space because his frameworks hold up in the real world. This is a good session to end the week on: practical, synthesis-oriented, and useful for anyone heading home to make the case for investment in data foundations.
Come find us at Summit
Permalink to “Come find us at Summit”We’ll be at Booth #1612 all week. Come by for a demo, a conversation about what’s keeping your data team up at night, or just to say hello. After all, the hallway conversations are half the reason to come to these things.
Learn more about Atlan at Snowflake Summit 2026 →
And if you want to get ahead of the week before you land in San Francisco, check out our Snowflake Summit agenda builder — a tool to help you cut through 500+ sessions and build a schedule that actually fits your role and priorities.
