Stefan Williams, vice president of corporate development and Snowflake Ventures for Snowflake, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.
It has been nearly five years since Stefan Williams established big data software producer Snowflake’s corporate venture capital arm, which has again been one of the most active CVC units in enterprise software this past year.
Williams also made last year’s Powerlist, but has since expanded his job title to incorporate both Snowflake Ventures and startups, reflecting the way the company has widened its open innovation activities.
Snowflake committed $200m to its Startup Accelerator in February, two years after it was launched. The accelerator provides technical support, cloud credits and marketing partnerships for promising AI startups. Partners in the programme include fellow CVC units Capital One Ventures and NTTVC.
Increased backing for the accelerator came in addition to a busy 2024 for Snowflake Ventures, which grew its active portfolio to nearly 40 companies over the course of the year.
Increased backing for the accelerator came in addition to a busy 2024 for Snowflake Ventures, which grew its active portfolio to nearly 40 companies over the course of the year.
Highlights included a $200m series D round for unicorn Sigma Computing, a $69m series B for fellow business intelligence software provider Omni and an $80m series A for enterprise gen AI startup Contextual AI. Data security software provider Veza’s $108m series D is among its deals so far this year.
The unit’s investments were buoyed by two exits, with data-driven cloud cybersecurity unicorn Lacework, and Metaplane, a developer of data anomaly detection tools, both being snapped up in acquisition deals.
This year also saw the fifth anniversary of Snowflake’s Startup Challenge, where the corporate teams up with the New York Stock Exchange and chooses three promising startups to share up to $1m in funding. Previous winners include machine intelligence technology provider Maxa AI.
In addition to early-stage investing, Williams’ corporate development tasks also include overseeing mergers and acquisitions for Snowflake.
The corporate bought Datavolo, a developer of data pipeline management tools for enterprise AI, in November, adding to earlier acquisitions such as AI-based energy forecasting platform Myst and the $800m purchase of Streamlit, creator of a deployment platform for data science applications.
The Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist represents the 100 individuals spearheading the future of the corporate venturing industry.
These individuals excel in terms of their venturing approach and structure, number and quality of portfolio companies and in their contributions to the corporate venturing profession.
