MongoDB vs Snowflake: Founders, CEOs and History
MongoDB was founded in 2007 by Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz, Kevin Ryan and is led by Chirantan "CJ" Desai. Snowflake was founded in 2012 by Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, Marcin Żukowski and is led by Sridhar Ramaswamy.
Company facts
Founders
MongoDB
Dwight Merriman
Dwight Merriman co-founded 10gen (now MongoDB) in 2007 after scaling problems with relational databases at DoubleClick shaped his view of how application data should be stored.
Eliot Horowitz
Eliot Horowitz co-founded 10gen in 2007 and wrote much of MongoDB's original core code. He served as CTO until leaving the company in 2020 and later founded the robotics software company Viam.
Kevin Ryan
Kevin Ryan co-founded 10gen in 2007 alongside Merriman and Horowitz, contributing business leadership and early company-building experience. He has co-founded several other New York companies, including Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, and Zola.
Snowflake
Benoit Dageville
Benoit Dageville co-founded Snowflake in 2012 and served as CTO and later President of Products. He co-designed the multi-cluster, shared-data architecture that separates storage from compute.
Thierry Cruanes
Thierry Cruanes co-founded Snowflake in 2012 and served as its chief technology officer, leading development of the core engine that runs SQL queries on cloud object storage.
Marcin Żukowski
Marcin Żukowski co-founded Snowflake in 2012 and brought his vectorized query processing research from Vectorwise into the Snowflake engine.
CEOs and their tenures
MongoDB
- Dev Ittycheria2014–2025
Former President and Chief Executive Officer
Grew MongoDB from an open-source project into a company with $2.0B of fiscal 2025 revenue, with Atlas becoming the main revenue engine.
Source - Chirantan "CJ" Desai2025–present
President and Chief Executive Officer
In his first full quarters, revenue growth accelerated to 30% in Q2 fiscal 2027 and MongoDB reported three consecutive quarters of positive GAAP EPS.
Source - Mike Berry2025–present
Chief Financial Officer
Has highlighted operating leverage, with non-GAAP operating margin reaching 24% in Q2 fiscal 2027.
Source
Snowflake
- Bob Muglia2014–2019
Former CEO
Former Microsoft executive who led Snowflake from its 2014 public launch through its early commercial growth before Frank Slootman replaced him in 2019.
Source - Frank Slootman2019–2024
Former Chairman and CEO
Slootman joined as CEO in April 2019, led the September 2020 IPO and scaled the enterprise sales organization. He stepped down as CEO in February 2024 and later left the board.
Source - Sridhar Ramaswamy2024–present
Chief Executive Officer
Ramaswamy became CEO in February 2024, initiating a new era of aggressive product innovation and artificial intelligence integration, overseeing the strategic expansion of Snowpark and the Snowflake Marketplace to capture the next wave of enterprise data workl…
Source
Timeline: MongoDB and Snowflake side by side
2007MongoDB
The 10gen Launch
The founders launch 10gen, pioneering the flexible document database architecture.
2012Snowflake
Founding of Snowflake
Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, and Marcin Żukowski founded Snowflake in 2012, working in stealth until October 2014 to build a new database engine from scratch in C++ that would separate compute and storage.
2014MongoDB
The WiredTiger Acquisition
Facing data integrity criticism, MongoDB acquires WiredTiger, rewriting its core engine.
2014Snowflake
Emergence from Stealth and Product Launch
Snowflake emerged from stealth in 2014, launching its multi-cloud data warehouse at the Strata + Hadoop World conference, immediately disrupting the market by offering a service that was easier to use, more scalable, and more cost-effective than any existing a…
2016MongoDB
The Atlas Debut
To monetize its user base, MongoDB launches Atlas, securing cloud revenue.
2017MongoDB
Nasdaq IPO
MongoDB listed on Nasdaq under the ticker MDB in October 2017.
2018MongoDB
The License Change
Fighting aggressive cloud leaders, MongoDB executes the controversial SSPL license shift, protecting its IP.
2020Snowflake
Historic Initial Public Offering
Snowflake listed on the NYSE under ticker SNOW on September 16, 2020, pricing shares at $120 and raising about $3.4 billion, then the largest software IPO on record.
2021Snowflake
Introduction of Snowpark
Snowflake introduced Snowpark in 2021, a developer framework that allows data engineers and scientists to write code in Python, Java, and Scala, marking the company's strategic expansion beyond traditional SQL-based business intelligence into complex data engi…
2024Snowflake
Transition of CEO Leadership
Sridhar Ramaswamy became CEO in February 2024, succeeding Frank Slootman, initiating a new era of aggressive product innovation and artificial intelligence integration to capture the next wave of enterprise data workloads.
2025MongoDB
Acquired Voyage AI
MongoDB acquired Voyage AI, a developer of embedding and reranking models, to improve retrieval accuracy for AI applications on Atlas.
2025MongoDB
CJ Desai Named CEO
CJ Desai, previously president of product and engineering at Cloudflare, succeeded Dev Ittycheria as president and CEO in November 2025.
2025Snowflake
FY2025 Revenue Reaches $3.626 Billion
Snowflake reported $3.626 billion in consolidated FY2025 revenue, generating $834 million in free cash flow and achieving a non-GAAP operating margin of 24%, demonstrating the extreme operating leverage of its consumption-based model and its successful navigat…
2026MongoDB
30% Quarterly Growth
Q2 fiscal 2027 revenue rose 30% to $771.8M with GAAP net income of $40.9M.
2026Snowflake
Snowflake passes $4.6B in FY2026 revenue
Snowflake reported FY2026 revenue of $4.684B and Q1 FY2027 revenue of $1.391B as it expanded its data and AI platform.
2026Snowflake
Observe acquisition closes and growth accelerates
Snowflake closed its Observe acquisition in May 2026 and on September 2, 2026 reported Q2 fiscal 2027 revenue of $1.55B (+35%), raising FY2027 product revenue guidance to $6.07B.
Acquisitions
MongoDB
- Voyage AI2025Undisclosed
- Realm2019$39M
- mLab2018$68M
- WiredTiger2014Undisclosed
Snowflake
- Observe2026Undisclosed
- Natoma2026Undisclosed
- TensorStax2026Undisclosed
- Neeva2023Undisclosed
- Streamlit2022$800M
Questions about MongoDB vs Snowflake
Who is the CEO of MongoDB, Inc. and Snowflake Inc.?
MongoDB, Inc. is led by Chirantan "CJ" Desai and Snowflake Inc. is led by Sridhar Ramaswamy. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was MongoDB, Inc. founded vs Snowflake Inc.?
MongoDB, Inc. was founded in 2007 — 5 years before Snowflake Inc., which was founded in 2012. MongoDB, Inc.'s longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Snowflake Inc..
How many employees does MongoDB, Inc. have compared to Snowflake Inc.?
MongoDB, Inc. employs approximately 5,636 people, while Snowflake Inc. employs approximately 9,060. Snowflake Inc. has the larger workforce at 9,060 employees, compared to MongoDB, Inc.'s 5,636. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are MongoDB, Inc. and Snowflake Inc. headquartered?
Both MongoDB, Inc. and Snowflake Inc. are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded MongoDB, Inc. and Snowflake Inc.?
MongoDB, Inc. was founded by Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz, Kevin Ryan. Snowflake Inc. was founded by Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, Marcin Żukowski.
Which company has a longer operating history — MongoDB, Inc. or Snowflake Inc.?
MongoDB, Inc. has been operating for approximately 19 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Snowflake Inc. has been in operation for around 14 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the MongoDB vs Snowflake overview