Snowflake says Frank Slootman is retiring as CEO; inventory plunges 20%

Snowflake mentioned Wednesday that CEO Frank Slootman, 65, is retiring, and might be changed by former Google advert chief Sridhar Ramaswamy. The shares plunged 20% in prolonged buying and selling.

Ramaswamy, 57, spent 15 years at Google, most not too long ago main Advertisements and Commerce till 2018. He then left to co-found Neeva in 2019, a shopper search engine he hoped to rival Google till final 12 months, when he introduced he was shutting it down. 

Snowflake acquired Neeva in June for $185 million, in line with a submitting.

“There isn’t any higher particular person than Sridhar to steer Snowflake into this subsequent section of progress and ship on the chance forward in AI and machine studying,” Slootman mentioned in an announcement. “He’s a visionary technologist with a confirmed observe document of working and scaling profitable companies.”

Snowflake additionally launched its fourth-quarter monetary outcomes, wherein gross sales grew 32% year-over-year to $774.7 million within the interval. Product income for the fourth quarter was $738.1 million, which was a 33% enhance from the earlier 12 months.

Working losses for the fourth quarter had been $275.5 million.

The corporate mentioned that steerage for product income within the first quarter would are available between $745 million to $750 million, decrease than the $759 million that analysts had been anticipating. Moreover, Snowflake mentioned that first-quarter adjusted working margin can be 3%, topping analyst estimates of seven.2%.

That is breaking information. Please examine again for updates.

Jennifer Elias and Jordan Novet contributed reporting