Snowflake Inc.

Snowflake Inc. is an American cloud-based data-warehousing company that was founded in 2012. Before going public, it has raised more than $1.4 billion in venture capital, and is based in San Mateo, California.[1] It was publicly launched by Bob Muglia in 2014 after two years in stealth mode.[2][3]

Snowflake Inc.
TypePublic
NYSE: SNOW
Founded2012 (2012)
FounderBenoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes and Marcin Żukowski
HeadquartersSan Mateo, California
Key people
Frank Slootman, Chairman and CEO; Benoit Dageville, President, Product; Thierry Cruanes, CTO; Marcin Żukowski, Co-Founder
ServicesCloud Data Platform
Revenue $264.7 million (2019)
-$348.5 million (2019)
Websitewww.snowflake.com

Snowflake offers a cloud-based data storage and analytics service, generally termed "data warehouse-as-a-service".[4][5] It allows corporate users to store and analyze data using cloud-based hardware and software. Snowflake runs on Amazon S3 since 2014,[2] on Microsoft Azure since 2018[6] and on the Google Cloud Platform since 2019.[7][8] Its Snowflake Data Exchange allows customers to discover, exchange and securely share data.[9]

History

Snowflake Inc. was founded in 2012 in San Mateo, California by three data warehousing experts: Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes and Marcin Żukowski. Dageville and Cruanes previously worked as data architects at Oracle Corporation; Żukowski was a co-founder of the Dutch start-up Vectorwise. The company's first CEO was Mike Speiser, a venture capitalist at Sutter Hill Ventures.[10] The company's name was chosen as a tribute to the founders' love of snow sports.[11]

Snowflake came out of stealth mode in October 2014[12] shortly after appointing former Microsoft executive Bob Muglia as CEO that June. The cloud data warehouse became generally available in June 2015[13][14] and had 80 organizations using it at that time.

Snowflake was identified as a "Cool Vendor" in Gartner's Magic Quadrant and won first place at the 2015 Strata + Hadoop World startup competition. Snowflake was listed as No. 2 on Forbes magazine's Cloud 100 list [15] in 2019, and was ranked No. 1 on LinkedIn's 2019 U.S. list of Top Startups.[16] As of February 9, 2020, Snowflake had 3,400 active customers,[17] including Capital One, Rent the Runway and Adobe.

In May 2019, Frank Slootman joined Snowflake as its new CEO.[7] In October 2019, Slootman said in a London press conference that Snowflake might pursue an initial public offering as early as the summer of 2020, but this got pushed back due to various factors.

On September 16, 2020, Snowflake made an IPO at $120 a share which more than doubled in value giving it a market valuation of $70.4 billion by the end of its first day of trading, with shares closing at $253.93, selling 28 million shares and raising $3.4 billion, making it the largest software IPO and the largest IPO to double on its first day of trading to date.[18][19][20]

Funding

Snowflake's main venture-capital backers include Sutter Hill Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Iconiq and Wing Venture Capital. The company raised $26 million before coming out of stealth and an additional $45 million was announced in June 2015.[21][22] A further $100 million was raised in April 2017.[23][24] In January 2018, Snowflake announced a $263 million investment round putting the company at a $1.5 billion unicorn valuation.[25] In October 2018, Snowflake raised another $450 million, raising its valuation to $3.5 billion.[4] It was announced on February 7, 2020 that the company had raised another $479 million, increasing its valuation to $12.4 billion.[17]

IPO

The company went public with its IPO listing on the NYSE on September 16, 2020. The IPO price range was between $100 to $110 a share, having increased from the initial price range of $75 to $85. Among famous pre IPO investors are Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (which bought its first IPO since Ford in 1956), and Sequoia Capital. This brought its open price to $245.[26]

On their IPO debut, the company was the highest valued software IPO ever and at the end of the day they were valued more than General Motors, Dell, and Uber.[27]

References
  1. "With huge new $450M funding round, Snowflake Computing has now raised almost $1 billion". www.geekwire.com. 2018-10-11.
  2. Handy, Alex (October 23, 2014). "Snowflake offers cloud data warehouse as a service, cheaply". SD Times. Retrieved November 20, 2014.
  3. Wingfield, Nick (October 21, 2014). "Longtime Microsoft Executive Opens Cloud Database Start-Up". The New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  4. Dignan, Larry (11 October 2018). "Snowflake raises $450 million in another VC round, valued at $3.5 billion". ZDNet. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  5. Bass, Dina (October 21, 2014). "Snowflake Takes Aim at Amazon, Hadoop With New Data Service". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  6. Brust, Andrew (July 12, 2018). "Snowflake's cloud data warehouse comes to Microsoft Azure". ZDNet. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
  7. Taulli, Tom (June 5, 2019). "Snowflake: The AI Force Multiplier". Forbes. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
  8. Ichhpurani, Kevin (June 4, 2019). "Announcing Snowflake on Google Cloud Platform". Google Cloud Blog. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
  9. "Snowflake Announces Data Exchange to Break Down Data Barriers" (Press release). PR Newswire. June 4, 2019. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
  10. Anders, George (September 4, 2019). "You're never too old to excel: How Snowflake thrives with 'dinosaur' cofounders and a 60-year-old CEO". Linkedin. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
  11. "Former Oracle engineers, ex-Microsoft exec reinvent data warehouses". Fortune. Retrieved Sep 9, 2020.
  12. Hesseldahl, Arik (June 23, 2015). "Big Data Startup Snowflake Raises $45 Million, Launches First Product". Re/code. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  13. Brust, Andrew (June 26, 2015). "Cloud data warehouse race heats up". ZDNet. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  14. Darfler, Benjamin (July 28, 2015). "Snowflake Announces General Availability of their Cloud Data Warehouse Offering". InfoQ. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  15. "The Cloud 100 2019". Forbes. Retrieved Sep 9, 2020.
  16. Hempel, Jessi (September 4, 2019). "LinkedIn Top Startups 2019: The 50 hottest U.S. companies to work for now". LinkedIn.
  17. "After $479M round on $12.4B valuation, Snowflake CEO says IPO is next step". Retrieved Sep 9, 2020.
  18. Driebusch, Corrie (September 16, 2020). "Snowflake's Stock Price Soars in IPO" – via www.wsj.com.
  19. "Snowflake shares more than double. It's the biggest software IPO ever". CNN.
  20. Bary, Emily. "Snowflake IPO surge makes it the priciest tech stock by a mile". MarketWatch.
  21. Vanian, Jonathan (June 23, 2015). "This big data startup is as unique as a snowflake". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  22. Vanian, Jonathan (October 21, 2014). "With $26M, Snowflake Computing is hoping its take on data warehousing will hit the mainstream". Gigaom. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  23. Dignan, Larry (April 5, 2017). "Snowflake Computing raises $100 million to expand cloud data warehouse footprint". ZDNet. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  24. "Cloud data warehouse startup Snowflake raises $100 million led by Iconiq". VentureBeat. April 5, 2017. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  25. Miller, Ron. "Snowflake lands massive $263 million investment on unicorn valuation". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-02-08.
  26. "Snowflake, JFrog IPO: Software stocks soar in market debut". Fast Company. 16 September 2020. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  27. Pressman, Aaron (2020-09-16). "Snowflake CEO: Doubling of stock price after IPO reflects 'frothy' market". Fortune. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
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