Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the Data Cloud company, announced today that Frank Slootman has decided to step down as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and that Sridhar Ramaswamy has been appointed as the new CEO and member of the Board of Directors with immediate effect. Mr. Ramaswamy previously served as Senior Vice President of AI at Snowflake.
Frank Slootman will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.
“As the leading cloud data platform, Snowflake is at the epicenter of the AI revolution,” Slootman said. “There is no one better than Sridhar to lead Snowflake in this next phase of growth and seize the opportunity we have ahead in AI and machine learning. He is a visionary technologist with a proven track record of managing and scaling successful businesses. I have full confidence in Sridhar and look forward to working with him as he takes on this new role.”
Over the past 12 years, Frank and the entire team have established Snowflake as the leading cloud data platform that provides companies with the secure, scalable, and cost-effective database foundation, as well as cutting-edge AI components they need to build the future,” said Ramaswamy. “I am honored to have been chosen to lead the company in this next chapter of growth. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead to help all customers leverage AI to deliver massive business value. My focus will be on accelerating our ability to deliver innovation to our customers and partners.”
Since joining Snowflake in May 2023, in connection with the acquisition of Neeva, the world’s first AI-driven private search engine company, Ramaswamy has been leading Snowflake’s AI strategy. He led the launch of Snowflake Cortex, Snowflake’s new fully managed service that makes AI simple and secure for all users to quickly drive business value. Prior to joining Snowflake, Ramaswamy co-founded Neeva in 2019.
Previously, Ramaswamy led all of Google’s advertising products, including search advertising, display and video advertising, analytics, shopping, payments, and travel. During his 15 years at Google, he was instrumental in growing AdWords and Google’s advertising business from $1.5 billion to over $100 billion. Ramaswamy also held research positions at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). Ramaswamy was a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners from October 2018 until recently, and serves on the board of trustees of Brown University.
About Snowflake
Snowflake enables every organization to mobilize their data with the Snowflake Data Cloud. Customers use the Data Cloud to unite isolated data, discover and securely share data, power data applications, and run various AI/ML and analytics workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake offers a unique data experience that spans multiple clouds and geographies. Thousands of customers in many industries, including 691 of the 2023 Forbes Global 2000 (G2K) as of January 31, 2024, use Snowflake Data Cloud to power their businesses.