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Snowflake Computing Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_Computing

Snowflake Inc.
Company typePublic
FoundedJuly 23, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-07-23)
Founders
  • Benoît Dageville
  • Thierry Cruanes
  • Marcin Żukowski
HeadquartersBozeman, Montana, U.S.
Key people
ServicesCloud data platform
RevenueIncrease US$3.63 billion (2025)
Decrease US$−1.5 billion (2025)
Decrease US$−1.3 million (2025)
Total assetsIncrease US$9.03 billion (2025)
Total equityDecrease US$3.01 billion (2025)
Number of employees
7,834 (2025)
Websitewww.snowflake.com Edit this at Wikidata
Footnotes / references
Financials as of January 31, 2025.[1]
Snowflake booth

Snowflake Inc. is an American cloud-based data storage company. Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, it operates a platform that allows for data analysis and simultaneous access of data sets with minimal latency.[1] It operates on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. As of November 2024, the company had 10,618 customers, including more than 800 members of the Forbes Global 2000, and processed 4.2 billion daily queries across its platform.[2]

History

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Snowflake Inc. was founded in July 2012 in San Mateo, California, by Benoît Dageville, Thierry Cruanes and Marcin Żukowski. Dageville and Cruanes previously worked as data architects at Oracle Corporation; Żukowski was a co-founder of Vectorwise. Mike Speiser, a venture capitalist at Sutter Hill Ventures, which provided early funding to the company, was the company's first CEO.[3]

In June 2014, Bob Muglia, formerly of Microsoft, was named CEO. In October 2014, Snowflake came out of stealth mode; at that time it was used by 80 organizations.[4][5]

Snowflake has run on Amazon Web Services since 2014,[6][7] on Microsoft Azure since 2018,[8] and on the Google Cloud Platform since 2019.[9][10]

In June 2015, Snowflake launched its first product, its cloud data warehouse.[11]

In May 2019, Frank Slootman, formerly CEO of ServiceNow, joined Snowflake as its CEO.[9]

In June 2019, the company launched Snowflake Data Exchange.[12]

In December 2020, the company added Knoema as a data provider in the Snowflake Data Marketplace.[13]

In May 2021, the company became a distributed company, with a principal executive office in Bozeman, Montana.[14]

In October 2022, the company acquired a 5% stake in advanced TV advertising firm OpenAP.[15]

In May 2023, Snowflake agreed to acquire privacy-focused search startup, Neeva, for $185 million.[16][17]

On February 28, 2024, Frank Slootman retired as CEO and was replaced by Neeva's cofounder Sridhar Ramaswamy.[17]

Products

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Snowflake develops and sells a cloud-based data platform known as the Data Cloud. The platform allows organizations to unify data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, and data sharing into a single service. Snowflake runs on public cloud infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and separates compute from storage for scalable, on-demand analytics.[18]

In 2020, Snowflake introduced Snowpark, a developer framework that enables writing data pipelines and business logic using Java, Scala, and Python directly within Snowflake.[19]

In 2021, Snowflake launched Unistore, a hybrid workload that combines transactional and analytical operations within the same platform, enabling real-time applications to be built directly on Snowflake.[20]

In 2023, the company introduced the Native App Framework, which allows developers to build, distribute, and monetize applications that run securely within a customer’s Snowflake account.[21]

Snowflake also provides services including Snowpipe for continuous data ingestion and the Snowflake Marketplace, where organizations can access and share live, query-ready datasets.[22]

In 2024, Snowflake launched Cortex, a set of generative AI services embedded into the platform. Cortex includes access to large language models, vector search, and model deployment capabilities, allowing users to build AI-powered applications using SQL or Python.[23]

Snowflake supports workloads such as machine learning, streaming analytics, business intelligence, and unstructured data processing, with integrations for tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Sigma Computing.[24]

2024 data breach

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In 2024, customers of Snowflake were targeted as part of a mass customer data theft and extortion campaign.[25][26][27][28] Data breaches affected Ticketmaster,[29] Advance Auto Parts,[30] Santander Bank, Neiman Marcus, LendingTree, AT&T, Pure Storage, and Bausch Health.[31]

Two men were involved in the hacking conspiracy. Connor Riley Moucka aka Waifu, 25, of Kitchener, Ontario, and John Erin Binns aka IRDev. Moucka was arrested on October 30, 2024; a Washington state court has issued an indictment on charges of conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, extortion, and aggravated identity theft.[32][33][34]

Funding

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In 2012, Snowflake raised $5 million in a Series A round. In October 2014, it raised $26 million.[4]

In June 2015, the company raised $45 million.[35][11][36] It raised $100 million in April 2017.[37][38]

In January 2018, the company raised $263 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, making it a unicorn.[39]

In October 2018, Snowflake raised $450 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital, at a $3.5 billion valuation.[4][40]

On February 7, 2020, the company raised $479 million. At that time, it had 3,400 active customers.[41]

On September 16, 2020, Snowflake became a public company via an initial public offering, raising $3.4 billion in one of the largest software IPOs and the largest to double on its first day of trading.[42][43][44][45][46]

Acquisition

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In June 2025, Snowflake announced its acquisition of Crunchy Data, a provider of cloud-based PostgreSQL services, for approximately $250 million. The acquisition is aimed at strengthening Snowflake’s capabilities in supporting enterprise workloads and enhancing its AI Data Cloud platform, particularly for applications involving artificial intelligence and machine learning.[47][48][49]

References

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  1. ^ a b "US SEC: Form 10-K Snowflake, Inc". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. March 21, 2025.
  2. ^ "US SEC: Form 10-K Snowflake, Inc". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. March 26, 2024.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ a b c Dignan, Larry (October 22, 2018). "Snowflake raises $450 million in another VC round, valued at $3.5 billion". ZDNet.
  5. ^ Bass, Dina (October 21, 2014). "Snowflake Takes Aim at Amazon, Hadoop With New Data Service". Bloomberg News.
  6. ^ Handy, Alex (October 23, 2014). "Snowflake offers cloud data warehouse as a service, cheaply". SD Times.
  7. ^ Wingfield, Nick (October 21, 2014). "Longtime Microsoft Executive Opens Cloud Database Start-Up". The New York Times.
  8. ^ Brust, Andrew (July 12, 2018). "Snowflake's cloud data warehouse comes to Microsoft Azure". ZDNet.
  9. ^ a b Taulli, Tom (June 5, 2019). "Snowflake: The AI Force Multiplier". Forbes.
  10. ^ Ichhpurani, Kevin (June 4, 2019). "Announcing Snowflake on Google Cloud Platform". Google Cloud Platform (Press release).
  11. ^ a b Hesseldahl, Arik (June 23, 2015). "Big Data Startup Snowflake Raises $45 Million, Launches First Product". Vox Media.
  12. ^ "Snowflake Announces Data Exchange to Break Down Data Barriers" (Press release). PR Newswire. June 4, 2019.
  13. ^ Gogineni, Manasa (December 21, 2020). "Knoema announces acquisition by Eldridge and partnership with Snowflake". VentureBeat.
  14. ^ Levy, Ari (May 26, 2021). "Snowflake relocates executive office from California to Bozeman, Montana, as company goes distributed". CNBC.
  15. ^ Sharma, Shubham (October 17, 2022). "Snowflake acquires stake in OpenAP to set up data clean room for advertisers". VentureBeat.
  16. ^ Palmer, Annie (May 24, 2023). "Snowflake shares plunge 12% on guidance miss, acquisition of search startup Neeva". CNBC.
  17. ^ a b Vanian, Jonathan (February 28, 2024). "Snowflake says Frank Slootman is retiring as CEO; stock plunges 20%". CNBC.
  18. ^ "How Snowflake Works". Snowflake. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  19. ^ "Announcing Snowpark: Bringing Data Programmability to the Data Cloud". Snowflake. June 15, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  20. ^ "Snowflake introduces Unistore to combine OLTP and OLAP". ZDNet. June 15, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  21. ^ "Build and Monetize Data Apps with the Snowflake Native App Framework". Snowflake. June 27, 2023. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  22. ^ "Data Sharing and Marketplace". Snowflake Docs. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  23. ^ "Introducing Snowflake Cortex". Snowflake. November 1, 2023. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  24. ^ "Snowflake Ecosystem". Snowflake. Retrieved May 19, 2025.
  25. ^ "The Snowflake Attack May Be Turning Into One of the Largest Data Breaches Ever". WIRED. June 6, 2024.
  26. ^ Whittaker, Zach (June 5, 2024). "Hundreds of Snowflake customer passwords found online are linked to info-stealing malware". TechCrunch.
  27. ^ Gatlan, Sergiu (June 5, 2024). "Advance Auto Parts stolen data for sale after Snowflake attack". Bleeping Computer.
  28. ^ Culafi, Alexander (June 10, 2024). "Mandiant: 'Exposed credentials' led to Snowflake attacks". TechTarget.
  29. ^ Whittaker, Zack (May 31, 2024). "Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach". TechCrunch.
  30. ^ Grieg, Jonathan (July 11, 2024). "Advance Auto Parts says more than 2 million impacted by data breach". Recorded Future.
  31. ^ Cox, Joseph (July 30, 2024). "Hacker Breaches Pharma Giant Bausch Health, Wants to Extort DEA". 404 Media.
  32. ^ Pender, Terry (November 29, 2024). "Accused Kitchener hacker unmasked after threatening woman online". The Record.
  33. ^ "US indicts Snowflake hackers who extorted $2.5 million from 3 victims". BleepingComputer.
  34. ^ "Indictment" – via DocumentCloud.
  35. ^ Vanian, Jonathan (June 23, 2015). "This big data startup is as unique as a snowflake". Fortune.
  36. ^ Brust, Andrew (June 26, 2015). "Cloud data warehouse race heats up". ZDNet.
  37. ^ Dignan, Larry (April 5, 2017). "Snowflake Computing raises $100 million to expand cloud data warehouse footprint". ZDNet.
  38. ^ Magistretti, Bérénice; Novet, Jordan (April 5, 2017). "Cloud data warehouse startup Snowflake raises $100 million led by Iconiq". VentureBeat.
  39. ^ Miller, Ron (January 25, 2018). "Snowflake lands massive $263 million investment on unicorn valuation". TechCrunch.
  40. ^ Krazit, Tom (October 11, 2018). "With huge new $450M funding round, Snowflake Computing has now raised almost $1 billion". GeekWire.
  41. ^ Miller, Ron (February 9, 2020). "After $479M round on $12.4B valuation, Snowflake CEO says IPO is next step". TechCrunch.
  42. ^ Driebusch, Corrie (September 16, 2020). "Snowflake's Stock Price Soars in IPO". The Wall Street Journal.
  43. ^ Bary, Emily (September 16, 2020). "Snowflake IPO surge makes it the priciest tech stock by a mile". MarketWatch.
  44. ^ Zara, Christopher (September 16, 2020). "Snowflake, JFrog IPO: Software stocks soar in market debut". Fast Company.
  45. ^ Pressman, Aaron (September 16, 2020). "Snowflake CEO: Doubling of stock price after IPO reflects 'frothy' market". Fortune.
  46. ^ La Monica, Paul R. (September 16, 2020). "Snowflake Shares More than Double. It's the Biggest Software IPO Ever". CNN.
  47. ^ "Exclusive | Snowflake to Buy Crunchy Data for $250 Million". Wall Street Journal. June 2, 2025. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved June 4, 2025.
  48. ^ "Snowflake Undercuts Databricks with Crunchy Data Acquisition". AIM Research | Artificial Intelligence Market Insights. June 3, 2025. Retrieved June 4, 2025.
  49. ^ "Delivering the Most Enterprise-Ready Postgres, Built for Snowflake". www.snowflake.com. Retrieved June 4, 2025.
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