How Snowflake raised $3bn in a record software IPO
But competition in the database business is heating up
CATCHING SNOWFLAKES is fun. It has become lucrative, too. Investors scrambled for shares in Snowflake, a maker of database programs, as it went public on the New York Stock Exchange on September 16th. The eight-year-old firm more than doubled its valuation the first day of trading, from $33bn to over $70bn, making its initial public offering the largest ever for a software firm. Even Warren Buffett, abandoning his customary tech-shyness, got in on the action. The legendary investor’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, put $735m into the firm, through a separate private placement and by purchasing shares from a former chief executive—a stake that is now worth $1.56bn.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Steam engine in the cloud”
Business September 19th 2020
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