Cloud data platform unicorn Snowflake started trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under the ticker symbol “SNOW” in what is expected to be the largest-ever initial public offering (IPO) for a software company.
The 8-year-old startup plans to sell 28 million shares at $120 each, which means Snowflake’s IPO will raise at least $3.36 billion pushing its value to $33.3 billion. Investors Salesforce.com and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway agreed to concurrently purchase $250 million in shares at the IPO price. However, Snowflake will likely raise more than $4 billion because its underwriters can buy an additional 4.2 million shares over the next 30 days.
The company had already raised its IPO price from $85 to $110 before settling on $120 per share.
Snowflake provides data warehouse services using a cloud-based architecture offered through an as-a-service model. This allows enterprise customers to analyze data stored in a central repository using business intelligence tools or other analytics applications. Its platform supports the three largest public clouds — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — however, it also competes against these platforms.
Snowflake Revenue, Customers More Than DoubledAccording to its most recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Snowflake has 3,117 customers as of July 31 compared to 1,547 a year earlier. These customers include seven of the Fortune 10 and 146 of the Fortune 500. Snowflake more than doubled its revenue over the last year, bringing in $96.7 million in fiscal 2019 and growing to $264.7 million in fiscal 2020.
“Snowflake took the cloud playbook, rewrote it and won,” said Clumio CEO Poojan Kumar. Clumio provides cloud-based enterprise backup services, and Kumar is a self-described “strong admirer” of Snowflake.
“Snowflake disrupted the crowded, well-established data warehousing market by rapidly innovating a seamless service that tapped the scale, elasticity and economics of the public cloud,” Kumar said in an emailed statement. “Snowflake transformed the old-school data warehouse into a cloud data platform and completely changed the way companies do business today — and its customers have felt the biggest benefit with huge cost savings and productivity increases with faster access to their data.”
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