Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway. Photo credit: Stuart Isett/Fortune Most Powerful Women, under Creative Commons license

Snowflake, the data warehousing startup which recently filed to go public, has received a vote of confidence from software giant Salesforce and investment firm Berkshire Hathaway. Both companies have each agreed to purchase $250 million of shares at Snowflake’s IPO price, with Berkshire even stretching further with an agreement to buy another 4 million shares in a secondary placement. The mid-point for Snowflake’s IPO pricing range is expected to be $80, implying Berkshire is coughing up more than $500 million in total for shares in Snowflake. 

The share purchase implies a significant vote of confidence for Snowflake, particularly from Berkshire, which doesn’t often invest in technology companies. Salesforce, on the other hand, is a prolific investor in technology companies and just recently cashed out its stake in video communications company Zoom for a sizeable profit. In the past, Salesforce has also owned sizeable stakes in publicly traded companies including Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, Twilio, and Lyft.

Snowflake’s IPO is expected to value the company at more than $20 billion, compared to a $12.4 billion valuation when the company last raised private funding. Snowflake is growing rapidly, with $265 million in revenues in its most recent fiscal year, up 150% from about $97 million in the previous year.

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