The tech CEO who quietly built a bigger fortune than Tim Cook
Kevin Dietsch
- Former Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman has achieved vast wealth as a non-founding tech exec.
- Bloomberg pegs his net worth at $3.7 billion — higher than both Tim Cook and Satya Nadella.
- He's been described as a militant CEO who's part of Silicon Valley's conservative wing.
The wildly successful and outspoken tech executive who just stepped down as CEO of Snowflake may not be as well-known as Apple's Tim Cook or Microsoft's Satya Nadella — but he's wealthier than both.
Frank Slootman, who retired as the cloud-based data-warehousing company's top exec last week, is worth $3.7 billion — a sum that exceeds Cook (who is worth about $2 billion) and Nadella (who is not yet a billionaire, Bloomberg reports.
A Snowflake spokesperson declined to comment.
Bloomberg reports that Slootman achieved his wealth as head of three companies: Snowflake, ServiceNow Inc., and Data Domain. He led Snowflake to a public offering that marked one of the biggest tech IPOs of 2020, raising $3.4 billion at a $33.3 billion valuation.
Slootman, who was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to the US in his 20s, has been described as a militant CEO who is part of Silicon Valley's conservative wing, alongside Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Palmer Luckey, Business Insider's Katie Warren reported in 2021. He has eschewed tenants like diversity and political correctness in favor of a profit-driven ethos.
In 2021, Slootman apologized after saying in an interview that he didn't want diversity to override merit when hiring and promoting. He clarified in a subsequent statement that diversity and merit weren't mutually exclusive, said Snowflake was committed to more DEI initiatives, and apologized to anyone hurt by his comments.
Slootman will remain as Snowflake's chairman of the board but has been succeeded as CEO by former Google ad exec Sridhar Ramaswamy, who joined Snowflake last May and has been leading its AI strategy.