Peter Wagner joins CNBC "Squawk Box" to discuss Snowflake's IPO
On September 16, 2020, Snowflake went public in the largest software initial public offering (IPO) in history. The company priced shares at $120 — above the already-raised range — and opened trading at $245, more than doubling on its first day. By the close, Snowflake's market capitalization had crossed $70 billion. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway participated in a concurrent private placement, a move virtually without precedent for a technology IPO and a signal of just how broad the conviction around Snowflake had become.
Wing Venture Capital founding partner Peter Wagner, who led our early investment in Snowflake, joined CNBC's "Squawk Box" the morning after the IPO to discuss what the moment meant — for the company, for cloud data infrastructure, and for the enterprise software market. Watch Peter's full conversation with the Squawk Box team below.
Wing's early bet on Snowflake
Wing invested in Snowflake at the early stage, before the platform was generally available. At the time, enterprise data warehousing ran on legacy on-premise systems — expensive and inflexible, poorly suited to the scale that cloud workloads demanded. Peter recognized that a purpose-built cloud data warehouse could fundamentally restructure how companies manage and analyze data. That conviction drove Wing's investment decision well before the broader market reached the same conclusion.
We wrote about the full arc of that investment thesis in "Snowflake, before it was obvious" — a companion piece that traces how the opportunity looked at the earliest stages and why Wing invested in Snowflake. Our vantage point as an early-stage investor gave us a first-hand view of Snowflake's traction with customers emerging in real time, long before it showed up in public market valuations.
What made the Snowflake IPO historic
Snowflake's IPO was the largest software IPO ever at the time of pricing. The company raised approximately $3.4 billion, pricing shares at $120 — above the already-raised range of $100 to $110. On its first day of trading, the stock more than doubled, opening at $245 and giving Snowflake a valuation above $70 billion by the close.
Two concurrent private placements underscored the breadth of institutional interest. Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce Ventures each purchased $250 million in shares at the IPO price — a rare move for Buffett, who has historically avoided technology IPOs. The combination of scale, pricing dynamics, and blue-chip participation set Snowflake apart from every prior enterprise software debut.
Key takeaways from the CNBC conversation
In his conversation with the Squawk Box team, Peter Wagner discussed what Snowflake's IPO reception revealed about the state of enterprise technology. The core point: Snowflake had achieved an unusually strong fit between its product and the problems enterprises needed to solve. Customers were not just adopting the platform — they were expanding their usage rapidly, a pattern that reflected genuine workflow displacement rather than incremental tooling additions.
Wagner also framed the IPO within the broader opportunity in cloud data infrastructure — the category of platforms purpose-built to manage and analyze data in the cloud rather than on legacy on-premise hardware. Enterprises were still early in migrating from on-premise to cloud, and the total addressable market for these platforms was expanding as companies accelerated migration timelines. The public market's response — valuing Snowflake above $70 billion on day one — signaled that institutional investors recognized the durability of this demand cycle, not just a single quarter of momentum.
Looking ahead
Snowflake's IPO validated a thesis Wing has held since our earliest investment: the shift to cloud data infrastructure is a generational platform transition, not a product cycle. When Peter Wagner first backed Snowflake, the conventional view held that incumbent database vendors would extend their dominance into the cloud. Instead, a purpose-built architecture won — and the public markets recognized it on day one.
For Wing, the Snowflake IPO also underscores a broader pattern we see across our portfolio. The most durable enterprise companies tend to emerge when a new infrastructure layer unlocks demand that legacy systems could not serve. Cloud data warehousing was one such layer. We expect the same dynamic to play out across AI infrastructure and developer tooling in the years ahead. You can follow Peter's ongoing commentary on enterprise technology on Twitter at @peter_wagner.
