# Spice Cloud v1.8.0: Iceberg Write Support, Acceleration Snapshots & More

Wyatt Wenzel

DevRel & Ops Leader at Spice AI
October 8, 2025

Spice Cloud & Spice.ai Enterprise 1.8.0 are live! v1.8.0 includes Iceberg write support, acceleration snapshots, partitioned S3 Vector indexes, a new AI SQL function for LLM integration, and an updated Spice.js SDK.

V1.8.0 also introduces developer experience upgrades, including a redesigned Spice Cloud dashboard with tabbed navigation:

Figure 1: Switch between datasets, queries, and models without losing context.

Spice Cloud customers will automatically upgrade to v1.8.0 on [deployment](/content/login?from=landing/index.html), while Spice.ai Enterprise customers can consume the Enterprise v1.8.0 image from the [Spice AWS Marketplace listing](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-jmf6jskjvnq7i).

#### What's New in v1.8.0

##### **Iceberg Write Support (Preview)**

Spice now supports writing to Apache Iceberg tables using standard SQL `INSERT INTO` statements. This greatly simplifies creating and updating Iceberg datasets in the Spice runtime - letting teams directly manipulate open table data with SQL instead of third-party tools. Learn more about [Spice SQL federation](/content/platform/sql-federation-acceleration/index.html) or get started with Iceberg writes in Spice [here](https://spiceai.org/docs/components/data-connectors/iceberg).

Example query:

```
-- Insert from another table
INSERT INTO iceberg_table
SELECT * FROM existing_table;

-- Insert with values
INSERT INTO iceberg_table (id, name, amount)
VALUES (1, 'John', 100.0), (2, 'Jane', 200.0);

-- Insert into catalog table
INSERT INTO ice.sales.transactions
VALUES (1001, '2025-01-15', 299.99, 'completed');
```

##### Acceleration Snapshots (Preview)

A new snapshotting system enables datasets accelerated with file-based engines (DuckDB or SQLite) to bootstrap from stored snapshots in object storage like S3 - significantly reducing cold-start latency and simplifying distributed deployments. [Learn more.](/content/blog/index.html)

##### Partitioned Amazon S3 Vector Indexes

Vector search at scale is now faster and more efficient with partitioned Amazon S3 Vector indexes - ideal for large-scale semantic search, recommendation systems, and embedding-based applications. Combine with [hybrid SQL search](/content/platform/hybrid-sql-search/index.html) for unified keyword and vector retrieval. [Learn more.](https://spiceai.org/docs/components/vectors/s3_vectors)

##### AI SQL Function (Preview)

A new asynchronous `ai`SQL function enables developers to call large language models (LLMs) directly from SQL, making it possible to integrate [LLM inference](/content/platform/llm-inference/index.html) directly into federated or analytical workflows without additional services. [Learn more.](https://spiceai.org/docs/reference/sql/ai)

##### Spice.js v3.0.3 SDK

v3.0.3 brings improved reliability and broader platform support. Highlights include new query methods, automatic transport fallback between gRPC and HTTP, and built-in health checks and dataset refresh controls. [Learn more](https://spiceai.org/docs/sdks/javascript).

##### Bug & Stability Fixes

v1.8.0 also includes numerous fixes and improvements:

- **Reliability**: Improved logging, error handling, and network readiness checks across connectors (Iceberg, Databricks, etc.).
- **Vector search durability and scale**: Refined logging, stricter default limits, safeguards against index-only scans and duplicate results, and always-accessible metadata for robust queryability at scale.
- **Cache behavior**: Tightened cache logic for modification queries.
- **Full-Text Search**: FTS metadata columns now usable in projections.
- **RRF Hybrid Search**: Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) UDTF enhancements for advanced hybrid search scenarios.

For more on v1.8.0, check out the full [release notes](https://spiceai.org/releases/v1.8.0).

#### v1.8 Release Community Call

Join us on Thursday, October 16th for live demos of the new functionality delivered in v1.8! [Register here](https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/OZwju7JDR6u3h9bJ6jdoQg?utm_campaign=23455564-v1.7.0%20Release&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_OxntfMUJd29JhuKpDEcdpRC8TMOIPtEFP4UeiSpDYjmJRG6Ta8S10WwosIQ1ccZhCD6JPZ8pmmyGJCsOtLzWsRFznWw&_hsmi=2&utm_content=2&utm_source=hs_email#/registration).

Figure 2: October 16th, v1.8 Release Community Call

##### Resources to Get Started with Spice

- [Sign up](/content/login?from=landing/index.html) for Spice Cloud for free, or [get started](https://spiceai.org/docs/getting-started) with Spice Open Source
- Explore the Spice [cookbooks](/content/cookbook/index.html) and [docs](https://spiceai.org/docs) 
- [Schedule a demo](https://meetings.hubspot.com/lukekim/talk-to-sales) if you'd like to see the product live or have any questions