New Snowflake Chief Sridhar Ramaswamy Joins List Of Global India-Born CEOs

Sridhar Ramaswamy has been elevated as chief executive officer of data cloud company Snowflake, becoming one of the latest additions to the list of tech CEOs of Indian-origin heading US-based global multinational companies.

Ramaswamy replaced Frank Slootman, who has chosen to retire as the CEO but will continue to serve as chairman of the board.

Ramaswamy previously held the position of senior vice president of AI at Snowflake.

Slootman said, “There is no better person than Ramaswamy to lead Snowflake into this next phase of growth and deliver on the opportunity ahead in AI and machine learning.”

“In the last 12 years, Slootman 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. We have an enormous opportunity ahead to help all customers leverage AI to deliver massive business value. My focus will be accelerating our ability to bring innovation to our customers and partners,” said Ramaswamy.

Since joining Snowflake in May 2023 as part of the company’s acquisition of Neeva, private AI-powered search engine, Ramaswamy has been spearheading Snowflake’s AI strategy. He led the launch of Snowflake Cortex, Snowflake’s new fully managed service that makes AI simple and secure for all users to drive business value quickly. 

Before Snowflake, Ramaswamy cofounded Neeva in 2019. 

His prior experience includes heading all of Google’s Advertising products, which included search, display and video advertising, analytics, shopping, payments, and travel. During his 15 years at Google, he was an integral part of the growth of AdWords and Google’s advertising business from $1.5 Bn to over $100 Bn.

Ramaswamy also held research positions at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). Ramaswamy was a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners from October 2018 until recently, and he sits on the board of trustees at Brown University.

Snowflake is a data cloud company headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. It was founded in July 2012 by Benoît Dageville and Thierry Cruanes. The company helps organisations use their data efficiently through the data cloud. It allows users to bring together different types of data, securely share and discover information, and run various AI/ML and analytic workloads. 

The announcement comes at a time when, in January, the company appointed former Microsoft executive Vijayant Rai as its new managing director for India.

Currently, many Indian-origin CEOs and high-profile executives hold key positions in major global corporations,  showcasing India’s influence on the international business stage. The market capitalisation of companies led by these executives reflects their wealth, highlighting significant contributions to the global business arena.

Some of the big names include Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, Vivek Sankaran, CEO of Albertsons, George Kurian, CEO of NetApp, among others.

In August 2023, the US-based company appointed Indian-origin Vaibhav Taneja, formerly the chief accounting officer at Tesla, as the chief financial officer (CFO).