Snowflake, a Silicon Valley cloud data warehousing company, on Tuesday night raised $3.4 billion in what is the largest software IPO ever.

Between the lines: Snowflake loses money, but got a big boost of confidence when Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway agreed to invest $500 million concurrent to the IPO.

Rocket ship: Snowflake raised venture capital in early 2018 at a $1.5 billion valuation, to help it compete in the red-hot business of helping companies move their legacy workloads into the cloud.

• The IPO values Snowflake at over $44 billion, with indicative bids suggesting it could open at double its $120-per-share IPO price.