As tech companies across the industry get more hardcore and focus on efficiency, Snowflake is doing the same in the age of AI.
Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy spoke with Business Insider about the company’s plan to become more operationally efficient while building more AI products. He said Snowflake increased the focus on metrics, made changes to the sales team, and was planning to hire more early-career talent to be more efficient.
In May, the cloud data warehousing company reported that it hit its first billion-dollar quarter and doubled its profitability to 9% from 4%. And over the past year, Snowflake’s stock has been up about 70%.
“I think we had a real opportunity to help our customers realize the power of their data by agentic applications,” Ramaswamy said. “I think our big challenge is we need to be seen as the best partner for helping companies transform themselves.”
Ramaswamy joined Snowflake in 2023 through the acquisition of the search startup Neeva, which he cofounded. Early last year, he became CEO, replacing Frank Slootman, who retired last year. With his experience from Neeva, Ramaswamy brought in his chops in search and AI.
“The appointment of Sridhar was a huge step in a direction where we really acknowledge the AI revolution that is happening around us,” Artin Avanes, the head of core data platform at Snowflake, told BI.
Snowflake sets performance targets
Last year, Snowflake set up a program to be clearer in its performance expectations by instituting objectives and key results. Ramaswamy said he hoped this would lead to “clearer accountability.”
“I’m a big believer in saying what you’re going to do and doing what you’re saying. We have instituted OKRs,” Ramaswamy said. “Every team underneath has a longer list of objectives and key results that they want to accomplish. The first change is this culture of accountability. We state what is important for the company.”
Snowflake made changes to its sales teams
Snowflake has also been growing its sales team and making several workplace changes. In March, it brought in Mike Gannon as its chief revenue officer. Gannon has worked at Dell, VMware, and Broadcom.
Gannon has publicly spoken about focusing on accountability through weekly metric tracking of sales productivity and using technology to be more efficient. For example, he told investors he intended to get new sales representatives productive in six months, rather than a year, by using AI. The company has also tracked the number of phone calls and in-person meetings it’s had.
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“We continue to drive efficiency as an ongoing thing,” Ramaswamy said.
Gannon also plans to work with more resellers, something that Mizuho analysts said Snowflake had historically not had as much success with.
Besides that, Snowflake has consolidated overlapping projects and worked to bring teams together by pairing up specific product groups with sales specialists, Ramaswamy said.
“We have a culture of greater urgency when it comes to new products in areas like AI, and working closer with go-to-market teams to take these products to market,” Ramaswamy said.
Snowflake is hiring early-career talent
Ramaswamy said Snowflake was planning to expand its profitability in 2026. One way to do that is to hire more early-career talent.
“They have the same value, and they tend to be more knowledgeable about things like AI tools,” Ramaswamy said. “That is one thing we can expand on to be operationally efficient.”
Snowflake has also used acquisitions of smaller startups to attract talent. Earlier this year, it acquired Crunchy Data. Ramaswamy said Snowflake’s previous CEO, Slootman, called its acquisition strategy “stem cell acquisitions,” meaning it would acquire a small startup to initiate progress in a certain technological area, such as search or AI.
This includes past acquisitions such as Neeva, Datavolo, Samooha, and Openflow. Ramaswamy said they “fill gaps” in the company’s product offerings.
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