--- title: Snowflake: the cloud data platform that produced the largest software IPO of 2020 | RGM® url: https://realgrowthmatters.com/learn/case-studies/snowflake-2020-ipo-data-cloud/ updated: 2026-06-10 source_html: https://realgrowthmatters.com/learn/case-studies/snowflake-2020-ipo-data-cloud/ --- - **Story:** Snowflake went public on September 16, 2020. Priced at $120/share, opened at $245, closed day one at $253.93 — valuing the company at ~$70B+. Berkshire Hathaway took a ~$735M position at IPO (highly unusual for Berkshire). The largest software IPO of 2020. - **Why it matters:** Snowflake is the defining high-flying tech-IPO case combining strong fundamentals with peak category enthusiasm. The post-IPO trajectory illustrates how IPO-day pricing reflects peak enthusiasm rather than sustained reality. - **Takeaway:** IPO timing matters more than IPO valuation. Peak enthusiasm produces harder post-IPO trajectories. - **Takeaway:** Berkshire Hathaway taking a tech-IPO position is itself a market signal. - **Takeaway:** Cloud-native architectural advantages (separating compute from storage) compound when the underlying category is growing. ## Snowflake IPO — the four-step story S Situation Cloud data infrastructure was emerging in 2012 AWS Redshift launched 2012. Hadoop and big-data tools required DevOps expertise. Enterprise data warehousing was Oracle, Teradata, IBM on-premise. Companies wanting fast cloud data warehousing had no good option. T Task Build a cloud-native data warehouse Snowflake's bet was that as enterprises moved data infrastructure to the cloud, they'd choose a purpose-built cloud option over forklifting Oracle. Architecture separated compute from storage. A Action Scale through 2014-2020, IPO at peak enthusiasm Grow revenue 110%+ year-over-year for multiple quarters. Land Fortune 500 enterprise customers. Bring in Frank Slootman as CEO 2019. File S-1 amid 2020 cloud-and-data investor enthusiasm. R Result $70B IPO, volatile post-IPO trajectory Day-one close at $253.93. Subsequent stock performance volatile but underlying business has continued growing. $3B+ annual revenue by 2024. Slootman retired Feb 2024. ## Snowflake IPO at a glance 0 IPO year September 16, 2020 NYSE: SNOW Source: SEC filings $0 IPO price Pre-market price set by underwriters Source: IPO filing $0 Day-one close +111% from IPO price Source: NYSE market data ~$0B IPO-day market cap Largest software IPO of 2020 Source: Public market data ~$0M Berkshire Hathaway stake Highly unusual for Berkshire Source: Berkshire 13F filing $0B+ Recent annual revenue 2024 annual revenue Source: Snowflake 10-K #### Quick facts CompanySnowflake Inc. (NYSE: SNOW) CEO at IPOFrank Slootman Co-foundersBenoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, Marcin Żukowski (Marcin Zukowski) Founded2012, San Mateo, California IPO dateSeptember 16, 2020 IPO opening price$245 (priced at $120, opened well above) IPO-day market cap~$70B+ Berkshire Hathaway stake~$735M at IPO (unusual for Berkshire to take a tech IPO position) **Honest note** Snowflake's IPO was the largest software IPO of 2020 at the time and one of the largest in history. Post-IPO stock performance has been volatile — the stock has both reached new highs and corrected significantly. The company has continued to grow revenue substantially but has faced occasional growth-rate decelerations that produced post-earnings stock drops. The IPO is a clean case study; the post-IPO trajectory is more nuanced. ## Where data infrastructure was in 2012 In 2012, enterprise data infrastructure was Oracle, Teradata, IBM, and on-premise data warehouses that cost millions per year to operate. AWS was the dominant cloud provider but its data-warehouse offering (Redshift, launched 2012) was still emerging. Hadoop and other open-source big-data tools required substantial DevOps expertise. Companies wanting fast cloud data warehousing without operational overhead had no good option. Benoit Dageville and Thierry Cruanes (former Oracle data-engineering leaders) along with Marcin Zukowski founded Snowflake in 2012 with a thesis: build a cloud-native data warehouse that separated compute from storage, scaled elastically, and required no infrastructure management. The bet was that as enterprises moved data infrastructure to the cloud, they'd choose a purpose-built cloud option over forklifting Oracle to AWS. ## The growth and the IPO Snowflake scaled through 2014-2020 under Frank Slootman's leadership (CEO from 2019). The product gained credibility through customer wins at major enterprises. Revenue growth was strong (110%+ year-over-year for multiple consecutive quarters at scale). The IPO was filed in 2020 amid significant investor enthusiasm for cloud-and-data infrastructure plays. The IPO itself was extraordinary. Priced at $120/share. Opened at $245. Closed day one at $253.93 (an unusual 111% pop). Berkshire Hathaway took a ~$735M position at IPO — the first major tech-IPO investment Berkshire had taken in years and highly unusual for Warren Buffett's value-oriented approach. The IPO-day market cap was approximately $70B+, making Snowflake one of the most valuable software companies in history at IPO. ## Post-IPO trajectory Snowflake has continued to grow revenue substantially through 2021-2024. Annual revenue passed $1 billion in 2021, $2 billion in 2022, $3 billion+ in 2024. The customer base has grown into thousands of enterprise customers including Disney, Capital One, AT&T, and major Fortune 500 enterprises. Stock performance has been more volatile than the IPO-day enthusiasm suggested. The stock has both reached new highs in 2021 and corrected significantly through 2022 and into 2023. Post-earnings drops have followed several quarters of growth-rate deceleration. Frank Slootman retired as CEO in February 2024, succeeded by Sridhar Ramaswamy. The post-Slootman era is still being defined. ## How RGM thinks about high-flying tech IPOs When clients ask about IPO timing and post-IPO realities, the Snowflake case is useful as both a model and a reality check. The model: a fast-growing cloud-infrastructure business with strong unit economics, credentialed leadership (Slootman had previously taken ServiceNow and Data Domain public), and broad investor interest can produce extraordinary IPO-day outcomes. The reality check: IPO-day prices reflect peak enthusiasm. The 18-36 months after IPO usually involve growth-rate deceleration that the IPO-day pricing didn't fully discount. The honest framework: IPO timing matters more than IPO valuation. Companies that IPO at the peak of category enthusiasm usually have harder post-IPO trajectories than companies that IPO with more conservative pricing. Snowflake's underlying business has held up well; the stock has been volatile partly because the IPO-day price assumed continued 100%+ growth that no software company sustains forever. ## Frequently asked questions Why did Berkshire Hathaway invest? Berkshire Hathaway taking a ~$735M position at Snowflake's IPO was widely seen as unusual given Warren Buffett's general skepticism of tech IPOs. Subsequent reporting has suggested the position was driven by Berkshire investment managers other than Buffett directly (likely Todd Combs or Ted Weschler). The Berkshire stake provided IPO-day enthusiasm that drove the unusually large opening pop. What does “separating compute from storage” mean? Traditional databases tightly couple compute (the servers running queries) and storage (the disks holding data). Snowflake's architecture separates them, letting customers scale compute up and down independently from storage. The architecture produces cost flexibility for variable workloads that on-premise data warehouses can't match. Who is Frank Slootman? A long-time enterprise-software CEO who took Data Domain public, sold it to EMC, then took ServiceNow public, before joining Snowflake as CEO in 2019 (taking the company public the following year). Slootman is widely considered one of the most-credentialed enterprise-software CEOs of the modern era. He retired from Snowflake in February 2024. ### Sources & references - [Snowflake investor relations (SNOW)](https://investors.snowflake.com/) — SEC filings and quarterly reports. - [Snowflake S-1 (2020)](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1640147/000119312520222076/d10027ds1.htm) — IPO filing with detailed business-model description. - [Frank Slootman — Amp It Up (book)](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Amp+It+Up:+Leading+for+Hypergrowth+by+Raising+Expectations,+Increasing+Urgency,+and+Elevating+Intensity-p-9781119836125) — Slootman's book on enterprise-software leadership. ## Related [#### All case studies The full case-study library.](/learn/case-studies/)[#### Slack PLG Adjacent enterprise-SaaS IPO and acquisition story.](/learn/case-studies/slack-plg-b2b-saas/)[#### Zoom pandemic Another 2020 enterprise-software story with volatile post-IPO trajectory.](/learn/case-studies/zoom-pandemic-acceleration-2020/)[#### Figma PLG Adjacent SaaS company that didn't IPO due to deal complications.](/learn/case-studies/figma-collaborative-design-plg/)