If data analytics startup Snowflake goes public this year, as was expected before the coronavirus-driven market downturn, investors’ demand for its stock is likely to be intense. The company, which tripled its valuation to $12.4 billion in a fundraising just last month, is growing quickly as businesses increasingly try to organize the mountains of data generated by applications, mobile devices, medical devices and cars. 

There’s only one problem: Competition from cloud giant Microsoft now threatens Snowflake’s business. Microsoft has been selling Snowflake’s database product on its Azure cloud platform since 2018. But recently Microsoft upgraded its own data analytics product and has been trying to persuade its customers to skip Snowflake in favor of Microsoft products, the people said.