Snowflake’s India Connection: AI Chief Sridhar Ramaswamy To Be New CEO
US-based Data Cloud company Snowflake on Wednesday said Sridhar Ramaswamy will be replacing Frank Slootman as the new CEO. Ramaswamy is formerly Snowflake’s senior vice president of AI and co-founder of Neeva, an AI-powered search engine acquired by Snowflake in 2023 and brings a wealth of experience from his 15-year tenure leading advertising products at Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
After joining Snowflake in May 2023 due to the company’s acquisition of Neeva, Ramaswamy took charge of Snowflake’s AI strategy. He played a key role in introducing Snowflake Cortex, a new fully managed service designed to streamline and secure AI usage for all users, facilitating swift business outcomes. Prior to his association with Snowflake, Ramaswamy was a co-founder of Neeva in 2019.
“… if I can draw the connection to where India is making an impact on Snowflake's innovation, it is our AI strategy. The person responsible for that at Snowflake is Sridhar Ramaswamy,” Sanjay Deshmukh, Senior Vice President of ASEAN and India, Snowflake told BW Businessworld in January.
Deshmukh said that at Neeva, Ramaswamy was leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) and transforming “search” long before the world caught up with the technology with the emergence of Generative AI. Neeva was acquired by Snowflake for a reported USD 150 million.
Prior to Neeva, Ramaswamy oversaw Google’s entire suite of Advertising products, encompassing search, display and video advertising, as well as analytics, shopping, payments and travel. His tenure of 15 years at Google was marked by his significant contributions to the expansion of AdWords and the growth of Google's advertising business, which grew from USD 1.5 billion to exceeding USD 100 billion.
Before Google, Ramaswamy held research positions at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). Additionally, he served as a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners from October 2018 until recently, and currently holds a position on the board of trustees at Brown University.
Frank Slootman, who retired from his position as Snowflake CEO, but will remain as chairman of the board, said, "There is no better person than Sridhar to lead Snowflake into this next phase of growth and deliver on the opportunity ahead in AI and machine learning."
Wall Street Reacts
Snowflake experienced a sharp decline in its share price during after-hours trading on Wednesday, tumbling more than 20 per cent. This drop followed the announcement of Ramaswamy as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and possibly due to underwhelming forecast for current fiscal year.
Snowflake’s fiscal 2024 fourth-quarter earnings report, initially showed promising signs. The company reported a 33 per cent increase in product revenue to USD 738.1 million, surpassing analysts’ expectations. Additionally, Snowflake narrowed its net loss to USD 169.9 million, which was an improvement from the previous year and better than what was anticipated by Wall Street.
However, despite the positive earnings figures, Snowflake’s forecast for the current fiscal year disappointed investors. The company projected product revenue of USD 3.25 billion, pointing to a 22 per cent increase over fiscal 2024. This growth outlook fell short of market expectations, particularly given Snowflake's previous year-over-year growth rate of 38 per cent.
Before the after-hours plunge, Snowflake’s market capitalisation stood at USD 75 billion.
