Snowflake launches Cortex AI Gateway

AI data cloud company Snowflake has introduced an AI gateway solution designed to act as the connective layer for trusted agent activity, while allowing users to monitor the costs of AI use.

Cortex AI Gateway enables enterprise users to control which models, data, applications, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and tools each AI agent can access. At launch, the platform is offering support for more than 100 MCP servers.

The platform is designed to provide a centralised record of agent activity to allow teams to operate agents safely at scale. Snowflake customers will be able to use the platform to control, orchestrate and govern both first-party agents built within Snowflake and third-party agents developed on external platforms. Meanwhile finance and IT teams will be able to use the platform to gain a unified view of AI consumption including costs incurred by individual teams, agents or workloads.

The launch of the solution builds on Snowflake’s acquisition of enterprise MCP platform provider Natoma in May.

Snowflake has also announced secure third-party agent access integrations with Aembit, 1Password, Linx Security, Okta, SailPoint and Saviynt, designed to introduce governance to third-party agents, enable task-scoped agent access and extend consistent governance across whole agent ecosystems.

Snowflake Chief Security and Trust Officer Mayank Upadhyay said enterprise AI is moving from data interoperability to agent operability.

“Security has to be at the centre of that shift,” he said. “Agent interoperability only works when enterprises can trust how agents from different platforms access data, invoke tools, and take action on behalf of users. Snowflake provides the visibility, governance and control capabilities needed to make that interoperability secure for production AI.

“The future of the agentic enterprise will not be built in closed agent ecosystems, and Snowflake is the trusted control plane that enables secure enterprise work.”

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