Snowflake Appoints Neeva Co-Founder as CEO to Leverage AI Opportunities

Data cloud company Snowflake announced today that Sridhar Ramaswamy, co-founder of Neeva and current Senior Vice President of AI, has been appointed as CEO. Ramaswamy takes over from Frank Slootman, who has retired after five years in the role but will remain as chairman of the board. Following the announcement, Snowflake's stock fell over 20%.

During Snowflake’s Q4 earnings call, which exceeded analysts' expectations with a 31.5% year-on-year revenue increase to $774.7 million, Slootman discussed his retirement and Ramaswamy’s leadership. He praised Ramaswamy's efforts in spearheading Snowflake’s AI strategies, launching new products like Cortex, a managed service for developing LLM applications in the data cloud, at an impressive pace.

Slootman noted, “With the surge of generative AI, Snowflake requires a hard-driving technologist. Sridhar’s vision and proven execution capabilities position him as the ideal leader for this critical time."

Ramaswamy echoed this sentiment during the call, stating, “Snowflake is a once-in-a-generation company that will transform the world through its cloud data platform. Generative AI is central to my discussions with customers.”

In a September 2023 interview, three months after Snowflake's acquisition of Neeva, Ramaswamy elaborated on his understanding of the company's product roadmap and the role of the Neeva team in enhancing search access to structured and unstructured data for Snowflake clients. He revealed, “We began developing prototypes on Snowflake even before the acquisition, which gave us a head start. Now, I'm ready to engage deeply with customers about their journeys with Snowflake.”

Ramaswamy emphasized the trust Snowflake has built over the past decade with its clients, who rely on the company to handle their data securely. Many enterprises seek Snowflake's guidance on leveraging AI to enhance their internal and customer experiences: “This is a promising direction for us.”