What’s new in dbt Cloud - April 2025

Spring is springing 🌷 and it’s time for another dbt product update! Lots of exciting new features to share below, so keep reading for all the details.

Also, ICYMI, we’re fresh off of our most recent product launch event, dbt Developer Day, where we showcased new features coming to dbt that will dramatically improve the developer experience so that teams can move faster, without sacrificing quality. Start your engines 🏁 and catch the replay here. While you’re at it, be sure to save your seat for our next big launch event, the dbt Launch Showcase, happening on May 28. Now onto what’s new in dbt Cloud this month.

Cross-team collaboration

🕵️‍♀️ Model query history is GA. Quickly track model usage and popularity with this helpful feature, embedded right into dbt Explorer. By quickly grasping the relative popularity of your models, you have a data-driven “to do” list of where you should allocate your engineering resources, as well as built-in empathy for the consumers behind the models you build. Generally available to dbt Enterprise customers on Snowflake and BigQuery, with Redshift and Databricks coming later this year. Read the docs to learn more.

📊 The Power BI integration for the dbt Semantic Layer is now in beta. This one has been a long time coming and we’re excited to finally announce that our customers can now query metrics defined in the dbt Semantic Layer directly from Power BI. This makes it possible for data teams to maintain metrics in dbt while enabling business users to consume those metrics in Power BI. Read the docs to learn more, and contact your dbt Labs account representative to request access to the .msi installer.

Developer productivity

🪄dbt Copilot is GA. Our AI-powered data assistant here! dbt Copilot is redefining data engineering with context-aware AI that captures rich context from your dbt projects—metadata, model structures, and semantics—to auto-generate tailored SQL, documentation, tests, and semantic models that align perfectly with your team's conventions. dbt Copilot transforms your analytics workflows from manual, routine work into an AI-enhanced discipline, making data engineering smarter, faster, and more accessible than ever before. Read the launch blog to learn more.

⚡ The next-generation dbt engine is now in private beta. Made possible by our recent acquisition of SDF Labs, this new engine brings dramatic improvements to developer experience and efficiency. Think: sub-second parse times, intelligent SQL autocompletion, and error detection without hitting the warehouse. The new engine will soon power both the dbt Cloud IDE and a brand-new, dbt-built VS Code Extension, also in private beta. Broader availability is planned for late May, and you can express interest in joining the beta now.

🧪 dbt Core 1.10 is now in beta, which includes sample mode and (soon) stricter validation. Sample mode lets you build just a subset of your data in dev or CI—perfect for large time-based datasets—so you can iterate quickly and cut down on warehouse costs. You can define trailing or historical time windows using the --sample flag, or set a default window at the environment level. Learn more in the dbt 1.10 docs.

Platform

😎 Dark mode is GA: Rejoice! You can now build your pipelines in the dbt Cloud IDE from the comfort of dark mode. Just navigate to your account name and set your theme to Dark.

🔒 Redshift External OAuth support via Identity Center for Okta and Microsoft Entra is GA. It’s now easier and more secure than ever to set up development credentials with Redshift —no more managing long-lived passwords or access keys. Read the docs to learn more.

⏫ The oldest dbt versions are being deprecated. To ensure the best possible usage experience in dbt Cloud, we are ending support for dbt versions 1.0-1.2. Any workloads you may still have running on these versions will be automatically upgraded to dbt v1.3 by April 30th. Soon all updates for dbt Cloud customers will occur via release tracks, a configuration that automatically upgrades your workloads to either the very latest or a recent version of dbt. As part of this move, within the coming months the dbt Cloud IDE will no longer support development for dbt versions <1.6. Please take note and proactively update your jobs and environments accordingly.

🔐 Azure DevOps Service Principal authentication is now live. This brings a big security upgrade to replace the legacy Service User approach for customers using ADO. The enhancement introduces short-lived, 1-hour access tokens in place of long-lived PATs, aligning with Microsoft’s upcoming 2FA enforcement for both user and service accounts. If you're still using the old method, now’s the time to migrate—your security team will thank you.

Partnerships

☁️ GoogleNext Recap: dbt went big at Google Next this week. We know many of you use BigQuery and have been asking for support for Google Cloud. We’ve got great news for you:

• dbt Cloud is now available in Preview for deployment on Google Cloud. If you’re interested, reach out to us at sdr@dbtlabs.com.
• You will soon be able to find us for purchase on the Google Cloud Marketplace so you can procure dbt from the same place you get all your Google Cloud technologies.
• dbt now supports DataFrames on BigQuery. Now you can execute dbt python models directly on BigQuery instead of Dataproc.
• We also now support Workload Identity Federation so users can avoid having to use service keys to authenticate to BigQuery and use Oauth instead.

🔌 Support for more data platforms: We introduced our Teradata adapter in late 2024. After great customer feedback and a rigorous beta program, we’re thrilled to announce that this adapter is now generally available. Also, IBM watsonx.data and IBM Netezza are now supported on dbt Core, maintained by the IBM team.

Lots more to come on May 28

We hope you’re as jazzed about these platform updates as we are! We look forward to seeing what you build and to hearing your feedback. Be sure to save the date for our next major launch event, coming to an internet browser near you on May 28—the dbt Launch Showcase. Lots of exciting updates to share there, including the latest on the new SDF-powered dbt engine, our VS Code extension, bringing the power of dbt to more data collaborators, and much much more. See you there.