Cloud data warehouse company Snowflake Computing Inc.’s plans to list on the public stock market at a valuation of as much as $24 billion just got a big vote of confidence: Both Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. agreed to purchase $250 million of the company’s stock at its IPO price in a concurrent private placement, according to a filing today.

In addition, Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to purchase 4.04 million more shares from one of Snowflake’s current stockholders in a secondary transaction.

And that’s not the only IPO coming soon: Sumo Logic Inc., which provides cloud-based log management and analytics services, also set its IPO price, planning to raise nearly $311 million. In addition, JFrog Ltd., which makes software tools for automating the process of building and maintaining apps, said today it expects to raise up to $428 million in its IPO.

Snowflake, which announced its IPO plans last month, sells a data warehouse service that enables companies to store and manage data in the cloud where it’s faster to access and analyze.

Snowflake’s IPO is likely to be one of the most anticipated this year at a time when several tech startups are hoping to take advantage of a surge in the Nasdaq index that has followed the coronavirus pandemic — recent market swoons aside. Companies that include American Well Corp., Asana Inc., Unity Technologies, JFrog Ltd. and Sumo Logic Inc. all announced IPOs on the same day.

Snowflake said in its filing that the midpoint of the pricing range of its IPO is likely to be $80 per share, which would value Berkshire Hathaway’s stake at more than $550 million when it goes public.

Salesforce’s interest in Snowflake is not much of a surprise, since it has a history of backing cloud software companies in recent years, with the likes of Dropbox Inc., Twilio Inc. and Zoom Video Communications Inc. all serving as examples.

But Berkshire Hathaway’s decision to back Snowflake is more unusual, as its Chairman and Chief Executive Warren Buffet has a reputation for being cautious when it comes to tech stocks.

That said, there’s plenty to like about Snowflake. The company’s revenue more than doubled in the first half of 2020, from $104 million to $242 million. Snowflake’s gross profit almost tripled over the same time frame, and that’s something investors should like since it shows the company can generate more earnings as it grows.

Snowflake’s filing came as fellow big data company Sumo Logic said it’s hoping to raise $310.8 million with its own IPO. It said it’s expecting to sell 14.8 million shares at a price range of $17 to $21 per share, which would put its value at more than $2.07 billion at the upper end of that scale.

Sumo Logic sells cloud-based big data tools that enterprises use to analyze massive amounts of information in order to glean insights that can help their businesses. In its filing today, it said entities affiliated with current stakeholder Tiger Global Management have shown an interest in purchasing 10% of its shares at IPO price.

Photo: Robert Hof/SiliconANGLE