Snowflake Archives - Crunchbase News /tag/snowflake/ Data-driven reporting on private markets, startups, founders, and investors Wed, 24 Jun 2020 18:53:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 /wp-content/uploads/cb_news_favicon-150x150.png Snowflake Archives - Crunchbase News /tag/snowflake/ 32 32 Massive Slowdown In 2020 VC Funding Hasn’t Happened … Yet /venture/massive-slowdown-in-2020-vc-funding-hasnt-happened-yet/ Wed, 18 Mar 2020 14:55:44 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=26661 When crashes happen, inevitably the startup space gets hit, too. Funding slows, the IPO window closes and investors say no to bankrolling huge losses in the name of growth.

Now that stocks are officially in bear market territory, and measures to curb coronavirus have turned the biggest tech hubs into work-from-home zones, we decided to check in to see if the downturn has yet impacted startup funding totals.

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The broad finding: Not quite yet. A Crunchbase global analysis of sizable venture funding rounds ($10 million and up) shows that reported totals are down about 11 percent in 2020 compared to the same period last year.

Overall, investors have put $41.1 billion to work in reported rounds of $10 million and up through March 17 of this year, compared to $46.2 billion in the same period in 2019. Although it looks like a moderate decline, it’s actually too early to tell, given that a sizable percentage of financings actually get reported weeks or months after the date they close.

This year’s totals have been boosted by supergiant financings for a handful of companies, with a lot of the money going toward transportation. That includes -incubated autonomous transportation startup ($2.25 billion venture round), ride-hailing rivals and ($1.2 billion and $856 million, respectively) and electric aircraft developer ($590 million).

Major funding recipients in sectors other than transport, meanwhile, include plant-based meat producer ($500 million), banking upstart ($500 million) and data warehousing provider ($479 million).

Why are big deals happening in the current environment? Partly, it’s because big, complicated private financing rounds typically take weeks or months to close.

Thus, it’s not entirely surprising to see some of the largest private investments getting announced over the same period that major stock indexes are posting their largest declines in years. A deal put together in a more bullish climate might be made public in a more bearish one.

Earlier indications of funding cutbacks may be more easily seen for smaller rounds at early and seed stage, when sought-after deals come together more quickly. However, this is difficult for us to track here at Crunchbase because reporting delays are also most frequent at these earliest stages. So, it’s hard to determine whether a drop in funding is due to delayed reporting or fewer checks being written.

Historically, however, startup funding has trended sharply lower in recessionary times, including after the implosion of the dot-com bubble in 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008-9.

If past cycles are any guide, we can expect a sharp startup funding slowdown in coming months. We’ll keep monitoring the funding totals for indications of that coming to pass.

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Snowflake Gets $479M, Reaches Decacorn Status With $12.4B Valuation /venture/snowflake-gets-479m-reaches-decacorn-status-with-12-4b-valuation/ Mon, 10 Feb 2020 16:53:19 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=25260 Data warehouse startup raised $479 million in a new round of funding, bringing the company’s valuation to a whopping $12.4 billion.

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New investors and 1 co-led the round, which comes along with a new partnership with Salesforce.

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman said in an interview with Crunchbase News that the company wasn’t looking to raise money, as it is “well-capitalized” and hasn’t really dipped into the last round it raised. But with the new partnership with Salesforce, it needed to find a way to bring its new partner to the cap table.

“We would not have raised a round if it hadn’t been for the partnership,” Slootman said.

He wouldn’t give details about what the partnership entails (they’ll share more information during its conference in June), but said the vast majority of Snowflake customers are also Salesforce customers, and the startup has been getting requests to work with Salesforce for years.

“At a high level, the partnership is about allowing Salesforce data to very easily, seamlessly, frictionlessly be shared on the Snowflake platform,” he said.

There won’t be any real operational changes with the new funding, Slootman said, but some of the equity will be converted to cash. The company finished its 2019 fiscal year with 174 percent year-over-year revenue growth.

For sure, $479 million is a huge sum to raise, and an impressive valuation–about triple what it was last valued (about $3.9 billion). It also makes Snowflake even more special and rare than a regular old unicorn, as it’s now reached decacorn status.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Snowflake has been steadily increasing its funding amounts until this point. So, in the spirit of nostalgia, let’s take a look back at its funding history.

The Money

Snowflake raised just under $1 million ($900,000 to be exact) in a 2012 seed round, before securing its $5 million Series A led by Sutter Hill Ventures in August 2012. Its Series B came a little over two years later in October 2014, with $26 million in a round led by Redpoint. You can see its funding history below in a neat chart made by our own Jason D. Rowley.

The company netted $79 million in a Series C round led by Altimeter Capital in June 2015, before it started raising supergiant rounds (we define those as rounds of $100 million or larger).

Snowflake raised a $105 million led by in September 2017, with a post-money valuation of about $500 million, according to Crunchbase. It reached unicorn status around the time of its $263 million in January 2018. According to Crunchbase, the company had a pre-money valuation of $1.2 billion at the time.

The rounds have only continued to get bigger with Snowflake’s last round being a $450 million led by in October 2018.

So what’s next for Snowflake? Slootman said an IPO would be next, but the company is in no hurry. The earliest Snowflake could go public would be July, but that doesn’t mean they will then.

“We’re very focused on the content itself, which means the data, and driving high-value data assets onto the platform, which is what we view Salesforce to be,” Slootman said. “That data is very valuable, not all data is created equal.”

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  1. Salesforce Ventures is an investor in Crunchbase. It has no say in our editorial process. For more, head here.

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