Agentic GIS now integrated with Snowflake Cortex AI
AI is rapidly transforming how organizations work with data, redefining everything from insight, discovery to operational decision-making. This shift is reshaping the geospatial industry, moving spatial analytics beyond static maps and dashboards toward intelligent, autonomous agentic systems that can reason, act, and convey spatial insights.
Late last year, CARTO introduced a new suite of Agentic GIS capabilities to bring AI-driven spatial analysis to everyone. Today, we’re thrilled to expand those capabilities with Agentic GIS running natively with Snowflake Cortex AI. This powerful integration allows you to power geospatial AI Agents using Snowflake-managed LLMs, all within their existing, governed Snowflake AI Data Cloud.
Agentic GIS is CARTO’s AI-native approach to geospatial analytics, designed to move beyond the limits of traditional GIS systems. Instead of being constrained by complex software or siloed tools, your analytical workflows become interactive and accessible across your entire organization.
Our vision for Agentic GIS is built on three pillars:
- Unlocking unprecedented reach: AI Agents make complex geospatial insights accessible to everyone by scaling geospatial team expertise into automated workflows. These agents are capable of planning and executing multi-step geospatial workflows—like catchment analysis or spatial joins— based on high-level goals provided by business stakeholders in natural language.
- Discovering deeper analytics insights: Thanks to Geospatial Foundation Models trained on vast amounts of spatial data, enabling a deeper understanding and discoverability of spatial patterns and insights.
- Accelerating team velocity: Embedded AI Assistants boost the productivity of the GIS analysts by accelerating everyday tasks, from generating spatial SQL and summarizing datasets to building maps and workflows.
Now with our new Snowflake Cortex AI integration, you can power CARTO's Agentic GIS using the LLMs you already trust — governed and managed directly in Snowflake.
But it goes a step further.
Through our CARTO MCP Server, you can expose your CARTO workflows as accessible MCP tools. This enables your AI Agents to operate fully in Snowflake, scaling your team’s geospatial expertise across the organization, without ever leaving your secure Snowflake AI Data Cloud.
For joint Snowflake and CARTO users, this native integration unlocks a powerful, unified workflow. It’s designed to help you::
- Power your analysis with Cortex AI: Run AI-powered geospatial analytics using Snowflake Cortex AI services you already use.
- Unified governance & security: Your data never leaves Snowflake. This integration is built to respect all your existing data access policies and security controls implemented in Snowflake.
- Native Snowflake performance: All spatial processing and computation in CARTO is executed directly in Snowflake, ensuring optimal performance, scalability, and consistency.
- Composable AI workflows with MCP: Expose your spatial workflows as MCP Tools, allowing AI Agents in CARTO to seamlessly connect to your Snowflake-managed LLMs in your existing environment.
As a Snowflake Technology Partner, CARTO is built to run natively on Snowflake, making it easier than ever to embed your trusted GIS processes into modern analytics and AI initiatives.
To enable AI capabilities, have your CARTO Admin navigate to the CARTO AI section in your organization's Settings and toggle on Enable CARTO AI.
To access AI models directly in your Snowflake environment, you need two things:
- API Base: Your Snowflake Cortex endpoint
- API Keys: Personal Access Token (PAT)
To see models supported check out our documentation here!
If you’re using CARTO on Snowflake, you can now enable Agentic GIS with Snowflake Cortex AI and begin building AI Agents that leverage geospatial workflows and models you already trust.
Ready to try geospatial AI in your Snowflake AI Data Cloud? Request a demo with one of our experts or explore our documentation to start building with Agentic GIS powered by Snowflake Cortex AI.
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