Cloud computing company Snowflake’s stock tanked more than 20% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company announced billionaire CEO Frank Slootman is retiring.
Slootman joined Snowflake in 2019.
Snowflake’s stock closed down nearly 2% on Wednesday at $230, later plunging as much as 24% in after-hours trading to around $173.
Slootman, who has been with the company for nearly five years and was instrumental in its historic IPO, will continue as the company’s board chairman and be replaced as CEO by Sridhar Ramaswamy—Snowflake’s senior vice president of AI and a former executive of Google’s advertising products division.
Slootman, 65, didn’t cite any specific reasons for his retirement in a statement, but said Ramaswamy’s takeover as CEO would benefit Snowflake’s foray into artificial intelligence.
Snowflake’s stock plunge erases a positive February, when the company’s stock began trading at $199 and jumped to as high as $236 per share by the middle of the month.
Snowflake also reported fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday, logging $774.7 million in sales and $738.1 million in product revenue, a 32% and 33% year-over-year increase, respectively
We estimate Slootman’s net worth at $3.7 billion, a figure partially built by his selling of storage startup Data Domain in 2009 for $1.8 billion.
Slootman is known for helping secure the software industry’s largest-ever IPO with Snowflake, which went public in 2020 at a $64.9 billion valuation. The 65-year-old has taken three companies public during his career, also doing so with Data Domain and enterprise software business ServiceNow, the latter of which boasts a $155.7 billion market capitalization and reported $295 million in net income in its latest earnings report.
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