Benoît Dageville Co-founder and director, Snowflake · NYSE: SNOW
- What he did
- On 4 November 2026, The Snow Trust UTA dated 9/10/19 — Dageville trustee — sold 50,000 Snowflake shares at $292.35, for $14,617,500, and gifted 16,668 shares the same day. Both were effected under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted 3 April 2026. The trust held 2,234,875 shares afterwards; he holds 177,343 directly, including shares issuable on RSU vesting.
- The document
- Form 4, Snowflake Inc. The comparable prior filings under the same plan: 21 October 2026 — 50,000 shares at $321.74 ($16,087,000) plus a gift of 16,668, trust at 2,301,543 after, filed 23 October 6:45pm ET. And 15 July 2026 — 50,000 shares at $276.53 ($13,826,500) plus a gift of 16,668, trust at 2,884,887 then 2,868,219, filed 16 July 8:17pm ET.
| Trade date | Shares sold | Price | Headline value | Gift | Trust after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Jul 2026 | 50,000 | $276.53 | $13,826,500 | 16,668 | 2,868,219 |
| 21 Oct 2026 | 50,000 | $321.74 | $16,087,000 | 16,668 | 2,301,543 |
| 4 Nov 2026 | 50,000 | $292.35 | $14,617,500 | 16,668 | 2,234,875 |
Consensus read
A Snowflake co-founder sold $14.6 million of stock on 4 November, days after the stock rolled over — insider selling into weakness, and one more data point in a run of director sales that the trade press has already tied to pressure on the share price. The headline is the dollar figure, and $14.6 million is a lot of conviction to take off the table.
Contrarian read
There is no decision in this filing to interpret. The 50,000-share clip and the 16,668-share gift are literally identical across July, October and November. This is a share-count plan, not a dollar plan, which means the $14.6 million headline is a readout of Snowflake’s share price, not of Dageville’s intent. The reported dollar value fell 9.1% between October and November for one reason: the stock did.
The evidence that discriminates
- The clip is fixed in shares and only in shares. 50,000 / 50,000 / 50,000, at $276.53, $321.74 and $292.35. If the plan were dollar-denominated, the share counts would vary inversely with price; they do not vary at all. This is the fact that separates “he decided to sell $14.6M” from “a pre-set 50,000 shares happened to be worth $14.6M.”
- The gift is fixed too — 16,668 shares, three times, to the share. A charitable or family transfer sized by the donor in the moment does not repeat an odd number like 16,668 across four months. It is a plan line.
- The trust balances reconcile exactly. 2,301,543 less 2,234,875 is 66,668 — 50,000 plus 16,668, to the share, with nothing else in between. Across the longer window, 2,868,219 down to 2,234,875 is 633,344 shares, exactly 9.5 times the 66,668 combined clip. The account is running a metronome, not responding to news.
- Timing is excluded by construction. The plan was adopted 3 April 2026 — seven months before the 4 November print, and before the October price action the trade press is connecting it to. Under Rule 10b5-1 the sale date was fixed in April. Nothing he learned in October or November could have moved it.
What would falsify me
If the next filing under this plan shows a share count other than 50,000 — or the gift at something other than 16,668 — the plan is not a fixed-share metronome and discretion is re-entering it.
If a Form 4 appears with the 10b5-1 box unticked, or a new plan adoption date, the “decided in April” defence disappears and the November sale becomes interpretable again.
And the honest limit on my own claim: a fixed-share plan is still a choice made in April. If Dageville adopted this plan in April precisely because he expected 2026 to be Snowflake’s high, the mechanical execution tells you nothing — but the adoption told you everything, seven months ago, and nobody wrote it up.
Pattern vs his own history Four months of filings available here show the same instrument each time: The Snow Trust UTA dated 9/10/19, 50,000 shares, 16,668 gifted, same plan date. He has not transacted in his own name in any of them. Separately he holds through Selene GRAT No. 1 and No. 2 as trustee, with mirror-image Thira GRATs held by his spouse over which he disclaims beneficial ownership — a detail that matters because aggregators sum those lines into a single “holdings” number he does not, by his own filing, beneficially own.