Sridhar Ramaswamy named CEO of Snowflake following Frank Slootman’s resignation

Snowflake, an American cloud computing company, has named Sridhar Ramaswamy, an Indian-origin computer scientist, as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) following the retirement of Frank Slootman. Slootman will remain as Chairman of the Board. Ramaswamy joins a growing list of Indian-origin CEOs leading major tech companies globally, such as Sundar Pichai at Google, Neal Mohan at YouTube, and Satya Nadella at Microsoft.

Sridhar Ramaswamy becomes CEO of Snowflake

Announcing the handover of the top job, Slootman said, “There is no better person than Sridhar to lead Snowflake into this next phase of growth and deliver the opportunity ahead in AI and machine learning. He is a visionary technologist with a proven track record of leading and scaling successful companies. I have the utmost confidence in Sridhar and I look forward to working with him as he takes on this new role.

Prior to joining Snowflake, Sridhar Ramaswamy spent 15 years at Google, leading its advertising division, after which he was the CEO of AI search engine Neeva, which he also co-founded. The company was subsequently acquired by Snowflake, resulting in Ramaswamy joining Snowflake in May 2023. He led the company’s AI strategy and led the launch of its new AI service called Snowflake Cortex.

Following the announcement, Ramaswamy said of his appointment: “I am proud to have been chosen to lead the company into this next phase of growth. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us to help all customers leverage AI to deliver tremendous business value. I am focused on accelerating our ability to bring innovation to our customers and partners.”

He becomes CEO of Snowflake at a time when the company is having revenue problems. Analysts had forecast product revenue of $769.5 million in the first quarter, down from $745 million to $750 million, according to a Bloomberg report. Therefore, the task of the newly appointed CEO is to revive the company now.