Databricks CEO Says Competition Spurred High-Profile Exit at Snowflake
(Bloomberg) -- Databricks Inc., a closely held analytics software maker, says competition from his company fueled a high-profile executive departure at rival Snowflake Inc.
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“I think we put a lot of pressure on them, and they realized that AI is important,” Chief Executive Officer Ali Ghodsi said Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television, referring to the recent departure of Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman. “Snowflake was basically not doing AI whatsoever.”
Slootman stepped aside last month for Sridhar Ramaswamy, a more product-focused leader. Ramaswamy was previously Snowflake’s senior vice president of artificial intelligence and had run an AI-focused startup. “I have a lot of respect for Frank, who I think did an excellent job at that company,” Ghodsi said of Slootman.
Snowflake declined to comment on Ghodsi’s remarks.
Databricks, which provides tools for data and analytics, was valued at $43 billion in September. Separately, the company announced Wednesday it would release an open-source large language model aimed at customers using their own proprietary data. Large language models are the technology underpinning generative AI in which new written content and images are produced from user prompts.
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