Snowflake to acquire MCP-focused Natoma to boost governance for AI agents
Snowflake said it plans to acquire US-based startup Natoma to boost governance, security, and connectivity for AI agents operating across heterogeneous enterprise environments, amid growing efforts by organizations to move agentic AI workflows from pilots into production. The cloud data platform provider is betting that enterprises will increasingly require centralized governance, identity controls, and auditability as AI agents begin interacting more deeply with internal applications, APIs, and business workflows through the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard, an area in which Natoma claims to specialize. Natoma’s platform, which provides MCP-based tool access along with governance and observability capabilities, will be integrated into Snowflake to help enterprises securely connect Cortex Agents, Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex Code, and other AI platforms with enterprise systems spanning SaaS applications, cloud environments, VPCs, and on-premises infrastructure through M