Snowflake says Frank Slootman is stepping down as CEO; shares fell 20%

Snowflake said Wednesday that CEO Frank Slootman is retiring and will be replaced by former Google advertising chief Sridhar Ramaswamy. Shares tumbled 20% in extended trading.

Ramaswamy spent 15 years at Google, most recently leading advertising and commerce until 2018. He then left to co-found Neeva in 2019, a consumer search engine that had hoped to rival Google until last year when it announced it was shutting down .

Snowflake acquired Neeva in June for an undisclosed price.

“There is no better person than Sridhar to lead Snowflake into this next phase of growth and deliver the upcoming opportunities in AI and machine learning,” Slootman said in a statement. “He is a visionary technologist with a proven track record of managing and scaling successful businesses.”

Snowflake also released its fourth quarter financials resultsin which sales rose 32% year over year to $774.7 million during the period.

The company said first-quarter product revenue guidance would be between $745 million and $750 million, lower than the $759 million that analysts had expected.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Jennifer Elias and Jordan Novette contributed reporting