Product release timeline · January 2024–August 2026
Data platforms shifted from governed data to agentic systems after 2024
Across 35 selected major releases, 2024 centered on catalogs, clean rooms and AI assistants; 2025 expanded into operational databases and unified governance; 2026 moved decisively toward agents, natural-language analysis and AI-native application infrastructure.
35
Major releases selected
4
Platforms compared
32
Months covered
13
Selected 2026 YTD releases
Release cadence by quarter
White 0 · pale 1 · medium 2 · dark 3 releases
24 Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
25 Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
26 Q1
Q2
Q3*
Snowflake
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
2
1
1
1
Databricks
1
1
0
2
0
2
1
0
2
1
1
BigQuery
0
2
0
2
0
2
0
0
0
2
1
ClickHouse
0
0
0
2
3
0
0
0
0
2
0
*Q3 2026 through 24 August.
What changed
1
Governance became the control plane. Unity Catalog Volumes, BigQuery’s unified catalog, Horizon Catalog and ClickHouse BYOC all pushed governance closer to the core product. cloud.google.com
2
Operational workloads moved into the analytics stack. Databricks Lakebase and ClickHouse Postgres added managed Postgres paths beside lakehouse and real-time analytics engines. databricks.com
3
AI advanced from assistant to agent. Early coding and BI assistants gave way to Snowflake Agentic Queries, ClickHouse Agents and governed AI gateways in 2026. clickhouse.com
Chronological timeline
2024
31 Jan
Snowflake
Native App Framework GAsnowflake.com
Made governed applications deployable directly inside Snowflake on AWS and Azure.
22 Feb
Databricks
Unity Catalog Volumes GAdatabricks.com
Extended unified governance to non-tabular data.
5 Apr
BigQuery
BigQuery data clean rooms GAcloud.google.com
Enabled privacy-preserving collaboration over sensitive data.
10 Apr
BigQuery
Gemini in BigQuery Announcedcloud.google.com
Added AI-assisted preparation, analysis, engineering and optimization.
7 May
Snowflake
Cortex LLM Functions GAsnowflake.com
Put hosted language-model functions behind SQL-accessible APIs.
27 Jun
Databricks
Databricks Assistant GAdatabricks.com
Generated code, diagnosed errors and created visualizations.
8 Oct
Databricks
Databricks Apps Public previewdatabricks.com
Introduced a managed route to internal data and AI applications.
9 Oct
BigQuery
Unified catalog GAcloud.google.com
Harvested and indexed metadata across the data estate.
9 Oct
BigQuery
Managed Apache Iceberg GAcloud.google.com
Added a managed experience for the open table format.
22 Oct
ClickHouse
JSON type Experimentalclickhouse.com
Introduced columnar storage and dynamic typing for JSON workloads.
2025
1 Jan
ClickHouse
Warehouses GAclickhouse.com
Added compute-to-compute separation for workload isolation and cost control.
22 Jan
ClickHouse
Enterprise tier Introducedclickhouse.com
Packaged higher security and compliance for demanding workloads.
19 Feb
ClickHouse
Bring Your Own Cloud on AWS GAclickhouse.com
Ran managed ClickHouse inside the customer’s AWS VPC.
10 Apr
BigQuery
BigQuery data products Previewcloud.google.com
Grouped governed data assets by business use case.
10 Apr
BigQuery
BigQuery universal catalog Announcedcloud.google.com
Unified cataloging, sharing, security and metastore capabilities.
30 Apr
Databricks
SAP Databricks GAdatabricks.com
Embedded managed Databricks in SAP Business Data Cloud.
12 Jun
Databricks
Lakeflow Designer Private previewdatabricks.com
Added an AI-powered no-code pipeline builder.
15 Jul
Databricks
Lakebase Public previewdatabricks.com
Brought managed Postgres into the lakehouse for intelligent applications.
24 Jul
Snowflake
Gen2 Warehouses GAsnowflake.com
Upgraded warehouse hardware and performance across all three clouds.
4 Nov
Snowflake
Snowflake Horizon Catalog Announcedsnowflake.com
Positioned a universal catalog as context and governance for AI.
4 Nov
Snowflake
Cortex AI Functions GAsnowflake.com
Delivered production AI operations directly in the SQL engine.
2026
29 Jan
Databricks
Serverless workspaces GAdatabricks.com
Combined preconfigured serverless compute and default storage.
3 Feb
Snowflake
Online Feature Store GAsnowflake.com
Served ML features in milliseconds for real-time production use.
3 Mar
Databricks
Azure Databricks Lakebase GAdatabricks.com
Made managed serverless Postgres production-ready on Azure.
20 Apr
Databricks
Data Classification GAdatabricks.com
Used agentic AI to classify and tag sensitive Unity Catalog data.
22 Apr
BigQuery
BigQuery measures Previewcloud.google.com
Embedded reusable governed business logic for agentic analysis.
27 May
ClickHouse
ClickHouse Agents Launchedclickhouse.com
Introduced a managed agentic analytics service powered by Claude.
2 Jun
Snowflake
Agentic Queries GAsnowflake.com
Let teams ask natural-language questions across Snowflake and external systems.
3 Jun
ClickHouse
ClickHouse Postgres Public betaclickhouse.com
Added a transactional NVMe-backed database beside the analytical engine.
31 Jul
Databricks
Unity AI Gateway GAdatabricks.com
Centralized enterprise AI governance within Unity Catalog.
7 Aug
BigQuery
AI.SEARCH GAcloud.google.com
Delivered natural-language search optimized for single-query execution.
7 Aug
Snowflake
Cortex Agents and MCP in Native Apps GAsnowflake.com
Made agents and MCP servers deployable through Snowflake Native Apps.
Method: 3,315 search results were scanned across official Snowflake, Databricks, Google Cloud and ClickHouse sites on 24 August 2026. The timeline is a curated set of major named products, product families and architectural capabilities; dates mark the cited announcement or release stage, so preview and GA dates are not directly equivalent. Routine patches, monthly versions, small functions, connectors and regional expansions were excluded.