Snowflake Moves to Acquire Natoma to Secure Enterprise AI Agents

Snowflake has announced plans to acquire AI governance startup Natoma as enterprises grapple with growing security risks tied to autonomous AI agents operating across business applications and workflows.

Snowflake said Natoma’s technology will help enterprises securely manage how AI agents interact with applications, APIs and sensitive data. Natoma operates a centralised Model Context Protocol (MCP) gateway that enforces identity verification, access policies and audit controls at the tool-call level.

According to Snowflake, the platform provides visibility into who initiated an AI action, what permissions were granted and whether the action complies with enterprise security policies.

“Their platform is a centralized MCP gateway that enforces identity, policy and audit at the tool-call level. For actions routed through Natoma, the platform provides visibility into who requested the action, what permissions they have and whether the action is allowed.

"This extends accountability to the new surface area of actions, tool calls and cross-application workflows. Following close, the integration of Natoma's capabilities into Snowflake will enable customers to connect Cortex Agents to the enterprise applications they use daily, securely and at scale,” Mayank Upadhyay, Snowflake Chief Security & Trust Officer and VP, Engineering, said.

Following the acquisition, Snowflake plans to integrate Natoma’s capabilities into its Cortex AI platform, enabling customers to securely connect AI agents with enterprise tools such as email, calendars, customer relationship management systems and internal knowledge bases.

The company said the integration will allow employees to automate tasks such as summarising emails, searching across workplace tools, updating records and managing workflows from a single interface while maintaining enterprise-grade governance controls.

"Snowflake is the world's most trusted platform for enterprise data and AI. With Natoma, that trust can extend to the data in motion between AI agents and enterprise systems - bringing together powerful models, trusted data, and governed action to help make the agentic enterprise a reality," Pratyus Patnaik, Natoma Co-Founder & CEO, added.

Snowflake described the deal as part of its broader strategy to build secure infrastructure for enterprise AI adoption.

Recently, the company reported first-quarter revenue of $1.39 billion, up 33% year-over-year, while its net revenue retention rate stood at 126%. It also added 779 customers, generating over $1 million in trailing 12-month product revenue, a 29% increase, and now counts 813 Forbes Global 2000 customers. Remaining performance obligations rose 38% to $9.21 billion.