Sridhar Ramaswamy, an individual of Indian descent and alumnus of IIT Madras, has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer and Board member of Snowflake, a prominent data cloud company headquartered in the United States. This appointment adds to the growing list of Indian-origin CEOs leading major multinational corporations. Ramaswamy, previously serving as Snowflake’s Senior Vice President of AI, takes over the CEO position from Frank Slootman, who has opted for retirement but will retain his role as Chairman of the Board.
“Over the last 12 years, Frank and the team have established Snowflake as the premier cloud data platform, providing enterprises with the secure, scalable, and cost-effective data foundation and cutting-edge AI building blocks they need for the future,” said Ramaswamy.
“I am honoured to have been selected to lead the company into the next phase of growth. We have a significant opportunity ahead to help all customers leverage AI to deliver substantial 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 first private AI-powered search engine. Since then, he has been instrumental in shaping Snowflake’s AI strategy. Under his guidance, Snowflake Cortex was launched, a new fully managed service aimed at simplifying and securing AI for all users, driving rapid business value.
Prior to 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 crucial 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.
