The Cortex AI Gateway, announced on 28 July 2026, sits between enterprise systems and the AI agents accessing them, handling authentication, policy enforcement and spend tracking for agents built inside Snowflake and those running on external platforms such as Claude Code and Cursor.
The launch follows Snowflake's acquisition of Natoma in May 2026. Natoma's enterprise MCP platform capabilities are now embedded directly in the Snowflake platform, giving the AI Gateway support for more than 100 MCP servers and a framework for governing how agents request access to models, tools and data at task scope rather than inheriting broad user credentials.
Six security vendors are joining as first-wave integration partners: 1Password, Aembit, Linx Security, Okta, SailPoint and Saviynt. Each brings a specific aspect of identity and access management to the agent problem. The integrations remain in private preview for most partners, with the Okta integration planned for Q4 2026.
The product addresses a problem that has become acute as organisations move AI pilots into production: agents operating across enterprise systems under broad user credentials, with no centralised way to track what they accessed, at what cost or under whose authority. Snowflake's approach applies zero-trust principles to agent sessions, limiting each to the access required for a specific task and maintaining an end-to-end activity log.
Meltwater, BlackRock and Thomson Reuters are among the early enterprise deployments.
The AI spending visibility component tracks costs by agent, workload and team and enforces spending limits before overruns occur. Cortex AI Gateway will enter public preview soon; spending and routing features are currently in private preview.
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