Snowflake Appoints Indian-Origin Sridhar Ramaswamy As CEO

Slootman remarked that Ramaswamy is ideally positioned to lead Snowflake into its next phase of growth, particularly in the realms of AI and machine learning

Sridhar Ramaswamy, of Indian origin, has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors at Snowflake, a data cloud company based in the United States. This adds another name to the already long list of Indian-origin CEOs of big multinational firms. Ramaswamy, formerly serving as Senior Vice President of AI at Snowflake, assumes the role of CEO, succeeding Frank Slootman, who has chosen to retire but will remain Chairman of the Board.

“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 honoured to have been chosen to lead the company into this next chapter of growth. We have an enormous opportunity ahead to help all customers leverage AI to deliver massive business value. My focus will be on accelerating our ability to bring innovation to our customers and partners," Ramaswamy added.

Ramaswamy joined Snowflake in May 2023 through the acquisition of Neeva, the world's pioneering private AI-powered search engine. Since then, he has been at the forefront of shaping Snowflake's AI strategy. Under his leadership, Snowflake Cortex was introduced, a new fully managed service designed to simplify and secure AI for all users, driving swift business value.

Slootman remarked that Ramaswamy is ideally positioned to lead Snowflake into its next phase of growth, particularly in the realms of AI and machine learning. Slootman emphasised Ramaswamy's visionary ability as a technologist and his track record in scaling successful businesses, expressing complete confidence in his ability to excel in his new role.

Before joining Snowflake, Ramaswamy co-founded Neeva in 2019. Previously, he oversaw all of Google's Advertising products, including search, display, and video advertising, as well as analytics, shopping, payments, and travel. Over his 15-year tenure at Google, he played a pivotal role in driving the growth of AdWords and Google's advertising business from $1.5 billion to over $100 billion.

Ramaswamy's professional journey includes research roles at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). He served as a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners until recently and presently serves on the board of trustees at Brown University. In 1989, he earned his B. Tech in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Subsequently, he pursued his Ph.D. at Brown University, US the same year.