Sridhar Ramaswamy (born 1967) is an Indian-American computer scientist and executive. He is the chief executive officer of cloud-based data-warehousing company Snowflake Inc. since February 2024. He was the cofounder and CEO of the startup company Neeva, an ad-free, privacy-focused search engine, until it was acquired by Snowflake.[1][2] He previously led Google’s $115 billion advertising division.[1][3]

Sridhar Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy in 2020
Born1967 (age 56–57)
EducationIIT Madras (BS)
Brown University (MS, PhD)
Known forco-founding Neeva
formerly running Google's ad business
TitleCEO of Snowflake Inc.
Children2
Scientific career
ThesisIndexing for Data Models with Classes and Constraints (1995)
Doctoral advisorParis Kanellakis

Early life and education

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Ramaswamy was born in 1967 in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India.[4][5] He attended IIT Madras and received a bachelor's degree in computer science.[6] He immigrated to the United States in 1989 and received a master's degree and PhD in computer science from Brown University.[1][6]

Career

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After graduating from college, Ramaswamy researched database analytics for three years at Bell Labs and held similar positions at Lucent Technologies and Bell Communications Research. While working for E.piphany as a machine learning systems developer, Google began recruiting engineers from the company.[7][6]

Ramaswamy joined Google in 2003 to work on the back-end infrastructure of AdWords as a mid-level engineer. He worked his way up the company over the course of 15 years.[7] In 2013, he was promoted to senior vice president of advertising and commerce at Google.[1][3]

Ramaswamy left Google in 2018 to become a partner at venture capitalist firm Greylock Partners. In 2019, he created Neeva as an alternative to Google Search, after becoming disillusioned with the limitations of the ad-supported search model. Instead of ads, Ramaswamy planned a subscription-based model for Neeva.[1] Neeva was launched in the US in 2021 and the next year in the UK, France, and Germany;[8][9] Neeva was acquired by Snowflake Inc. in 2023.[10] In February 2024, Ramaswamy succeeded Frank Slootman as Snowflake's CEO.[11]

Personal life

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Ramaswamy lives in Cupertino, California, with his wife and two sons.[7]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Wakabayashi, Daisuke (21 June 2020). "A Former Google Executive Takes Aim at His Old Company With a Start-Up". New York Times. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  2. ^ Swant, Marty (8 March 2021). "After Building Google's Advertising Business, This Founder Is Creating An Ad-Free Alternative". Forbes. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  3. ^ a b D'Onfro, Jillian (October 2, 2018). "The exec in charge of Google's biggest business leaves to join a venture firm". CNBC. Retrieved October 2, 2018.
  4. ^ Ramaswamy, Sridhar (May 1995). Indexing for Data Models with Classes and Constraints (PDF) (Thesis). Brown. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 February 2024. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
  5. ^ Rajan, Nandagopal (24 January 2021). "Neeva founder Sridhar Ramaswamy: 'We guarantee that your data is used to serve you better results and for nothing else'". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 8 December 2022.
  6. ^ a b c "Sridhar Ramaswamy". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 2015-05-23. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
  7. ^ a b c Efrati, Amir (6 April 2015). "The Ascension of Google's Sridhar Ramaswamy". The Information. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  8. ^ "Ex-Google ad boss builds tracker-free search engine". BBC News. 5 October 2022. Retrieved October 6, 2022.
  9. ^ "Learn About The Creator Of The Revolutionary Ad-Free Search Engine". Top AI Blogs. Retrieved April 2, 2023.
  10. ^ "Snowflake acquires Neeva, days after the search startup pivots to enterprise". VentureBeat. 2023-05-24.
  11. ^ Vanian, Jonathan (28 February 2024). "Snowflake says Frank Slootman is retiring as CEO; stock plunges 20%". CNBC. Retrieved 28 February 2024.
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