Snowflake is a cloud-based warehouse company that doesn’t do small rounds. Last Friday, the company raised $479 million with a $12.4 billion valuation. This is way more than the company’s previous valuation of $3.9 billion in October 2018. Moreover, CEO Frank Slootman has said that the company’s next financial event will be an IPO.
Dragoneer Investment Group is leading the current funding round along with Salesforce Ventures. Some other investors in the round include Altimeter Capital, Madrona Venture Group, ICONIQ Capital, Sequoia, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. The new round has increased the total money raised by the company to $1.4 billion.
So, now the question is that when the company will go public. Besides Snowflake, other companies, like Credit Sesame, also have plans to go public.
Slootman has acknowledged that it is going to be the next step in the organization. He said in a statement, “I think that the earliest we could do this is somewhere in summer. However, it isn’t a problem right now because we aren’t getting any pressure from investors.”
He also added, “The only pressure is that it is quite important for the employees. Therefore, we may go public in 2020; however, we can also go public in 2021.”
The company’s previous round was in October 2018, when it raised around $450 million. Slootman mentioned that the company didn’t need money. However, it wanted to have a great relationship with Salesforce.
Slootman said, “We want to give Salesforce access to Snowflake. We think that this relationship will play a key role in the company’s growth.”
Now, Snowflake has good relations with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and AWS. Moreover, it has a content strategy board to have quality data on the platform. Slootman says that it helps in a network effect. Furthermore, it helps to move data between several could platforms, which is a big concern.
Slootman states that investors want to get a share in the company because it is solving many data-related issues. Moreover, the company’s growth is attracting new customers at a high rate. Slootman said, “Our previous fiscal year ended last Friday, which makes our revenue growth at 174%. This makes us one of the fastest-growing companies out there in the market.”
Currently, the company has 3,400 active customers, which are customers who actively used the platform last month. He says that the company has gained around 500 new customers in the previous quarter.
