BUSINESS

Snowflake Sets an IPO Record

You may not know them, but you probably will soon.

Stefon Walters

September 17, 2020

Snowflake—a big data company that you've probably never heard of until this week—IPO'd yesterday and set the record for the biggest software IPO ever. Considering all the big-name software companies to go public, this is big news.

The company set its initial stock price at $120 per share the night before its IPO, but soon after the markets opened, the price Vince Carter jumped up to $245. At one point, the share price was above $300.

Warren Buffett, Salesforce, and a bunch of other rich White men that you wouldn't recognize if you were sitting beside them on the plane invested in Snowflake, which is partly why the demand was so high for the stock on its first day.

People believe in the company's long-term potential and don't want to be caught on outside looking in while Snowflake makes a lot of people a lot of money.

Snowflake sold 28 million shares and raised $3.4 billion, which is 3x larger than second-place VMWare, which raised $1 billion back in 2007.

CEO Frank Slootman, who joined the company 17 months ago and owns 5.9% of it, is now worth $3.9 billion—SHEESH! J. Cole tried to tell us that your life could change in one year.