Snowflake Inc. is an American

cloud-based Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are con ...

company. Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, it operates a platform that allows for

data analysis Data analysis is the process of inspecting, Data cleansing, cleansing, Data transformation, transforming, and Data modeling, modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Da ...

and simultaneous access of

data set A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more table (database), database tables, where every column (database), column of a table represents a particular Variable (computer sci ...

s with minimal latency. It operates on

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

, Microsoft Azure, and

Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, Computer data storage, data storage, Data analysis, data analytics, and machine learnin ...

. , the company had 10,618 customers, including more than 800 members of the

Forbes Global 2000 The ''Forbes'' Global 2000 is an annual ranking of the top 2000 public companies in the world, published by: sales, profit, assets and market value. The list has been published annually since 2003. By country Forbes Global 2000 as of 2023: ...

, and processed 4.2 billion daily queries across its platform.

History

Snowflake Inc. was founded in July 2012 in

San Mateo, California San Mateo ( ) is the most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It is part of the San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan region, and is located about south of San Francisco. San Mateo border ...

, by Benoît Dageville, Thierry Cruanes and Marcin Żukowski. Dageville and Cruanes previously worked as data architects at

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

; Żukowski was a co-founder of

Vectorwise Actian Vector (formerly known as VectorWise) is an SQL relational database management system designed for high performance in analytical database applications. It published record breaking results on the Transaction Processing Performance Council ...

. Mike Speiser, a venture capitalist at Sutter Hill Ventures, which provided early funding to the company, was the company's first CEO. In June 2014, Bob Muglia, formerly of

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, was named CEO. In October 2014, Snowflake came out of stealth mode; at that time it was used by 80 organizations. Snowflake has run on

since 2014, on Microsoft Azure since 2018, and on the

since 2019. In June 2015, Snowflake launched its first product, its cloud

data warehouse In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business intelligence, reporting and data analysis and is a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central Re ...

. In May 2019, Frank Slootman, formerly CEO of ServiceNow, joined Snowflake as its CEO. In June 2019, the company launched Snowflake Data Exchange. In December 2020, the company added Knoema as a data provider in the Snowflake Data Marketplace. In May 2021, the company became a distributed company, with a principal executive office in Bozeman, Montana. In October 2022, the company acquired a 5% stake in advanced TV advertising firm OpenAP. In May 2023, Snowflake agreed to acquire privacy-focused search startup, Neeva, for $185 million. On February 28, 2024, Frank Slootman retired as CEO and was replaced by Neeva's cofounder Sridhar Ramaswamy.

Products

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. In 2020, Snowflake introduced Snowpark, a developer framework that enables writing data pipelines and business logic using Java, Scala, and Python directly within Snowflake. 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. 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. Snowflake also provides services including Snowpipe for continuous data ingestion and the Snowflake Marketplace, where organizations can access and share live, query-ready datasets. 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. 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.

2024 data breach

In 2024, customers of Snowflake were targeted as part of a mass customer data theft and extortion campaign.

Data breach A data breach, also known as data leakage, is "the unauthorized exposure, disclosure, or loss of personal information". Attackers have a variety of motives, from financial gain to political activism, political repression, and espionage. There ...

es affected

Ticketmaster Ticketmaster Entertainment, LLC is an American ticket sales and distribution company based in Beverly Hills, California, with operations in many countries around the world. In 2010, it merged with Live Nation under the name Live Nation Ente ...

, Advance Auto Parts, Santander Bank, Neiman Marcus,

LendingTree LendingTree, Inc. is an online lending marketplace, founded in 1996 and headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The business platform allows potential borrowers to connect with multiple lender, loan operators to find optimal terms for loans, ...

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

, Pure Storage, and Bausch Health. 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 Washington, officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is often referred to as Washington State to distinguish it from the national capital, both named after George Washington ...

court has issued an

indictment An indictment ( ) is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felonies, the most serious criminal offense is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use that concept often use that of an ind ...

on charges of

conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivat ...

, computer fraud and abuse,

extortion Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit (e.g., money or goods) through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, although making unfounded ...

, and aggravated

identity theft Identity theft, identity piracy or identity infringement occurs when someone uses another's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. ...

Funding

In 2012, Snowflake raised $5 million in a

Series A round A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in excha ...

. In October 2014, it raised $26 million. In June 2015, the company raised $45 million. It raised $100 million in April 2017. In January 2018, the company raised $263 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, making it a

unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...

. In October 2018, Snowflake raised $450 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital, at a $3.5 billion valuation. On February 7, 2020, the company raised $479 million. At that time, it had 3,400 active customers. On September 16, 2020, Snowflake became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...

via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

, raising $3.4 billion in one of the largest software IPOs and the largest to double on its first day of trading.

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.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control 2012 establishments in California 2020 initial public offerings American companies established in 2012 Big data companies Big data products Cloud computing providers Cloud databases Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Computer companies established in 2012 Data warehousing products Information technology companies of the United States