Snowflake Inc. is a cloud-based data warehousing company that provides a fully managed, SQL-based data warehouse platform. Founded in 2012, the company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and was established by three data warehousing experts, Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, and Marcin Zukowski. They sought to address the challenges and limitations of traditional on-premise and cloud-based data warehouses, which often struggled to handle the increasing volume, variety, and velocity of data generated by modern organizations.

Offerings

The company’s core offering, the Snowflake Data Cloud, is a fully managed, multi-cloud, and global data platform built for the efficient storage, integration, and analysis of structured and semi-structured data. The platform has gained popularity for its unique architecture, which separates the storage, compute, and cloud services layers. This separation allows customers to scale their compute and storage resources independently, offering cost-effective and performance-driven solutions. The platform supports a wide variety of data workloads, including data engineering, data lake, data warehousing, data science, data applications, and data sharing.

Snowflake’s platform is designed to work across various cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), enabling customers to have a seamless, unified data experience across different environments. The company’s platform also supports various data formats, including JSON, Avro, Parquet, and ORC, and allows users to run SQL queries across these data types without the need for additional transformations.

Funding Rounds

Throughout its history, Snowflake has raised significant capital to fuel its growth and expansion. The company has completed multiple funding rounds, with notable investors such as Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Altimeter Capital, ICONIQ Capital, and Sutter Hill Ventures. In February 2018, Snowflake raised $263 million in a Series E funding round led by ICONIQ Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Altimeter Capital, which valued the company at $1.5 billion. In October 2018, the company raised another $450 million in a Series F round led by Sequoia Capital, bringing its valuation to $3.5 billion. Snowflake’s latest funding round, a Series G in February 2020, brought in an additional $479 million and was led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Salesforce Ventures, with participation from existing investors. The Series G round valued the company at a staggering $12.4 billion.

Initial Public Offering (IPO)

Snowflake made its public debut on September 16, 2020, with an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol “SNOW.” The IPO was a resounding success, raising over $3.4 billion and making it the largest software IPO in history at the time. The company’s shares were initially priced at $120, but they opened at $245 on the first day of trading and have continued to show strong growth since then.

Acquisitions

In terms of acquisitions, Snowflake has made strategic moves to bolster its product offerings and expand its market presence. In January 2019, the company acquired Numeracy, a San Francisco-based startup specializing in data visualization and exploration tools. The acquisition aimed to enhance Snowflake’s platform with improved visualization capabilities and make it easier for users to explore and analyze their data.

Partnerships

Snowflake has also formed key partnerships with various technology companies to enhance its platform and extend its reach. In June 2019, the company announced a strategic partnership with Salesforce, integrating Snowflake’s platform with Salesforce’s Customer 360 platform to enable mutual customers to unify and analyze their data across various sources. In February 2020, as part of the Series G funding round, Salesforce Ventures became a strategic investor in Snowflake, further solidifying the partnership between the two companies. Snowflake has also partnered with other industry leaders, such as Tableau, Looker, Informatica, Talend, Fivetran, and Matillion, to enhance the platform’s data integration, visualization, and analytics capabilities.

Awards and Recognitions

Snowflake’s innovative approach to data warehousing and its rapid growth have earned the company various awards and recognitions. In 2018, the company was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics, which evaluates vendors based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. In 2019, Snowflake was recognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Cloud Data Warehouse, Q4 2018, and was also named a Cool Vendor in the Cool Vendors in Data Management report by Gartner. Additionally, the company was ranked 40th on the Forbes Cloud 100 list in 2019, a list that recognizes the top 100 private cloud companies globally.

Furthermore, Snowflake’s commitment to customer success has earned it a loyal customer base across various industries, including finance, healthcare, retail, media, and more. Some of its notable customers include Adobe, DoorDash, Instacart, Logitech, Office Depot, Rakuten, Sonos, and Western Union. These organizations rely on Snowflake’s platform to store, process, and analyze their data, driving data-driven insights and decision-making.