Meet IITian Sridhar Ramaswamy, the newest CEO of US-based Snowflake

American data cloud company Snowflake announced the departure of Frank Slootman as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and named IITian Sridhar Ramaswamy as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and member of the Board of Directors, effective immediately.

Frank Slootman will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board, the company said in a release. Ramaswamy previously held the position of Senior Vice President of AI at Snowflake.

Who is Sridhar Ramaswamy?

Sridhar Ramaswamy completed his B.Tech from IIT Madras in 1989. He also holds a Ph.D. from the US-based Brown University. Prior to joining Snowflake, he co-founded the world's first private AI-powered search engine, Neeva, which was acquired by Snowflake last year.

Following this, he joined Snowflake in May 2023 and led the launch of Snowflake Cortex, Snowflake’s new fully managed service that makes AI simple and secure for all users to quickly drive business value.

Previously, Ramaswamy led all of Google’s advertising products, which included search, display, and video advertising, analytics, shopping, payments, and travel. During his 15 years at Google, he was an integral part of the growth of AdWords and Google’s advertising business from $1.5 billion to over $100 billion.

Ramaswamy also held research positions at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). Ramaswamy was a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners from October 2018 until recently, and he sits on the board of trustees at Brown University.

What did Frank Slootman say about the new CEO?

“As the leading cloud data platform, Snowflake is at the epicenter of the AI revolution,” said Slootman. “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. He is a visionary technologist with a proven track record of running and scaling successful businesses. I have the utmost confidence in Sridhar and look forward to working with him as he assumes this new role.”

Helping customers leverage AI

“In the last 12 years, Frank and the entire team have established Snowflake as the leading cloud data platform that is providing enterprises with the secure, scalable and cost effective data foundation and cutting-edge AI building blocks they need to build for the future,” said Ramaswamy. “I am honored to have been chosen to lead the company into this next chapter of growth."

He said the company will focus on helping its customers leverage AI to deliver massive business value. "My focus will be on accelerating our ability to bring innovation to our customers and partners," Sridhar added. 

What does Snowflake do?

Snowflake provides a platform known as the Data Cloud, which is designed to enhance how organizations utilize their data. The platform enables companies to consolidate data that may be isolated in different systems or locations, thereby simplifying access and analysis.

It also offers features for discovering valuable data and sharing it securely with others, ensuring that privacy and security are not compromised. Furthermore, Snowflake supports the development and operation of data-driven applications, providing a foundation for insights, decision-making, and services based on data analysis.

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