DocETL author: AI functions in SQL are making database vendors serious money
sh_reya · x · 2026-09-04
The DocETL author reflects that AI-powered data processing has gone mainstream: two years ago skeptics claimed better models would "solve" unstructured data processing, but AI functions (AI operators) in SQL are now being operationalized and generating significant revenue for Snowflake, Databricks, ClickHouse, BigQuery, and MotherDuck.
Quoted context from Seth Rosen notes these mature systems were never designed around LLMs, so vendors must solve architectural problems the rest of software faces — possibly first. The author sees only the tip of the iceberg: opportunities span BI interfaces for humans and agents down to custom LLM inference/execution engines and new storage-engine features and indexes.
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