Billionaire investor Dan Loeb follows Warren Buffett and Marc Benioff into Snowflake

• Billionaire hedge-fund manager Dan Loeb has joined Warren Buffett and Marc Benioff as a Snowflake shareholder.
• Loeb's Third Point, which counts Amazon and Alibaba among its biggest holdings, revealed a position in Snowflake in its latest portfolio update.
• Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Benioff's Salesforce both purchased Snowflake stock in private placements immediately after it went public last month.
• Snowflake is a natural fit for Third Point and Salesforce's tech-heavy portfolios, but it's an unusual bet for Berkshire given Buffett's past warnings against tech stocks and IPOs.
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Billionaire investor Dan Loeb has followed Warren Buffett and Marc Benioff into Snowflake, the cloud-data platform that went public last month and saw its stock price more than double during its first day of trading.

Loeb's Third Point fund counted Snowflake among its winning investments in September, its latest portfolio update shows. However, it didn't disclose the size of its stake or when it was purchased.

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Snowflake contributed to an 11.7% gain for Third Point's portfolio last quarter, outstripping the S&P 500's 8.9% gain over the same period. Yet the fund's 3.6% gain for the year to September trailed the benchmark index's 8.9% rally.

The software company is a natural fit for Third Point, which held stakes in Alibaba, Amazon, Adobe, Salesforce, Facebook, and other tech stocks at the last count.

The same is true for Salesforce Ventures, the investment arm of Benioff's enterprise-software giant, which backed Snowflake before it went public and bought $250 million of its stock in a private placement after its IPO.

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In contrast, Berkshire's decision to invest about $735 million into Snowflake surprised many commentators. Bar its massive Apple stake, Buffett's portfolio leans towards financials, industrials, and consumer goods rather than technology.

Buffett has also warned against IPOs and lossmaking tech companies with sky-high valuations in the past, making the Snowflake bet a major anomaly, even if Todd Combs, one of his deputies, was responsible for it.