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Snowflake Inc.
Cloud-based data-warehousing company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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[update], 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]
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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]
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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]
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2024 data breach
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
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]
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Acquisition
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
External links
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