Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

Does Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) truly offer a viable independent alternative to the hyperscale cloud giants, or is it just a niche player? With full-year 2025 revenue guidance between $145.4 million and $146.0 million, and B2 Cloud Storage revenue accelerating 28% year-over-year in Q3, the market is defintely paying attention. This growth, driven by a focus on high-performance AI workloads and a mission to serve over 500,000 customers, is positioning the company to be free-cash-flow positive in Q4 2025, which is a critical operational milestone. Understanding its unique ownership structure-where retail investors hold a majority stake-along with how its two core products work and generate revenue, is essential for any investor or strategist looking past the traditional 'big three' providers.

Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) History

If you want to understand Backblaze, Inc.'s strategy today-especially its aggressive push into the high-performance cloud storage market-you have to look back at its scrappy, capital-efficient origins. This company didn't follow the typical Silicon Valley funding playbook, and that early discipline is why its cost structure remains so competitive now.

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

Backblaze was founded in 2007.

Original location

The company's headquarters are in San Mateo, California, where it was established.

Founding team members

The company was started by a team of seven founders who were focused on solving their own data backup frustrations.

• Gleb Budman (CEO)
• Billy Ng (Server Architect)
• Nilay Patel (VP of Sales)
• Brian Wilson (CTO)
• Casey Jones (VP)
• Tim Nufire (Chief Cloud Officer)
• Damon Uyeda (Software Engineer)

Initial capital/funding

The most remarkable part of Backblaze's early history is its financial discipline. The company scaled for 14 years with less than $3 million in outside equity funding before its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 2021. That's defintely not the norm in tech. This lean approach forced them to innovate on hardware and software efficiency, which is the core reason they can offer such low-cost cloud storage today.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

The company's trajectory was shaped by three major, non-consensus decisions. First, the founders chose to build their own storage system, the Backblaze Vault, from commodity hardware instead of using expensive enterprise solutions. This engineering-first approach is why their gross profit margin remains strong; in Q3 2025, the adjusted gross profit margin was 79% of revenue.

The second big moment was launching B2 Cloud Storage in 2015. This moved them beyond the consumer backup niche and into the much larger cloud object storage market, where they could directly challenge the hyperscalers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud). This segment is now the primary growth engine; B2 Cloud Storage revenue grew 28% year-over-year in Q3 2025, contributing significantly to the total quarterly revenue of $37.2 million.

Finally, the 2021 IPO was a necessary step to fund the next phase of growth. They had been so capital-efficient, but scaling to compete globally requires a larger war chest. Now, the focus is on financial transformation, with the company on track to be adjusted free cash flow positive in the fourth quarter of 2025, which is a huge milestone for a growth-focused public company. You can dig deeper into who is buying into this story here: Exploring Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Here's the quick math on their near-term outlook: Backblaze expects full-year 2025 revenue to land between $145.4 million and $146.0 million, with an Adjusted EBITDA margin between 18% and 20%. That shows a clear path to sustainable growth, but still, the challenge is maintaining that B2 growth rate against the cloud giants while achieving profitability.

Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) Ownership Structure

Backblaze, Inc. is a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol BLZE, a status it has held since its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in November 2021. The ownership structure is distinct in the cloud space, characterized by a significant stake held by individual retail investors, giving the general public a strong collective voice in governance matters.

Backblaze's Current Status

As of November 2025, Backblaze is a public company, headquartered in San Mateo, California, and is actively traded. Its market capitalization was approximately $327.70 million as of early November 2025, reflecting its position as an independent cloud storage platform. The company's leadership has recently reinforced alignment with shareholders by adopting a new stock ownership policy for directors and executives, requiring the CEO, for instance, to hold stock equal to five times their annual base salary.

You can learn more about the company's key stakeholders and their motivations by Exploring Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Backblaze's Ownership Breakdown

The company's ownership profile shows a relatively balanced distribution between institutional, insider, and retail investors, with the general public holding the largest single block. This is defintely a key factor to watch, as high retail ownership can lead to more volatile stock price movements.

Backblaze's Leadership

The company is steered by its co-founder and a seasoned executive team, blending deep technical expertise with strong financial and operational backgrounds. The core leadership has been stable, which is helpful for consistent strategic execution.

• Gleb Budman: Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and Chairman of the Board. He has led the company since its inception in 2007, guiding its growth to over half a million customers globally.
• Marc Suidan: Chief Financial Officer (CFO), joining in 2024. He brings over 20 years of financial, strategic, and operational experience from both growth startups and global Fortune 500 companies.
• Brian Beach: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), a long-time member of the company, serving as CTO since 2022. He focuses on building next-generation distributed storage solutions.
• Anu Patil: Chief of Staff, promoted to the role in 2025 after orchestrating several organization-wide transformational projects across 2024 and 2025.

Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) Mission and Values

Backblaze, Inc.'s core mission and values are fundamentally about democratizing cloud storage, focusing on simplicity and affordability to directly challenge the complexity and vendor lock-in of the hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services. This cultural DNA is what allows them to project a full-year 2025 revenue guidance of up to $146.0 million while maintaining a high-touch, transparent customer focus.

Backblaze, Inc.'s Core Purpose

You're not just buying storage; you're buying freedom from complexity. Backblaze's purpose is rooted in making data protection and use astonishingly easy, a clear differentiator when you consider the steep learning curve of larger cloud providers. Their commitment to transparency, for instance, extends to publishing their quarterly Drive Stats and Network Stats reports, something you defintely won't see from their competitors.

Official Mission Statement

The formal mission statement is straightforward and speaks to its origins: to provide refreshingly easy cloud storage and data backup for everyone. This isn't just a feel-good statement; it's an operational mandate that drove their Q3 2025 Adjusted EBITDA to $8.4 million, proving simplicity can be profitable. However, their CEO, Gleb Budman, has recently framed their active mission to be even more direct:

• Make customers unstoppable by solving their toughest data storage challenges.
• Eliminate complexities traditionally associated with data storage.
• Ensure data protection and accessibility for over 500,000 customers across 175 countries.

Vision Statement

The company's vision is a clear, long-term goal that anchors their strategy in a market where trust is everything. Their ambition is to be 'the world's most trusted cloud storage platform.' This vision isn't about being the biggest, but the most reliable and ethical choice. Here's the quick math: trust reduces churn, which is critical for a subscription business model aiming for a full-year 2025 revenue of at least $145.4 million.

• Establish a global reputation for reliability, security, and integrity.
• Expand services to become a leading cloud provider worldwide.
• Be the independent cloud platform of choice for the AI era.

Backblaze, Inc. Slogan/Tagline

While the marketing team has used a few taglines over the years, the most concise and energetic campaign slogan is one you've probably heard: "Blaze It." It's a rallying cry that captures their speed and unconventional approach. Still, their most descriptive and current tagline, often used in financial and press releases, clearly states their market position:

• The Leading Independent Cloud Storage Platform.
• Cloud storage innovator providing a modern alternative to traditional cloud providers.

To understand how these principles translate into actionable business strategy, review the full details here: Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE).

Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) How It Works

Backblaze, Inc. operates as an independent cloud platform, offering a high-performance, cost-effective alternative to hyperscale providers for data storage and backup. The company's core function is to simplify the complex task of data management by providing transparent, predictable pricing and an open platform that accelerates modern workflows like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and media processing.

You can think of it as a two-sided business: one side is a set-it-and-forget-it backup service for individuals, and the other is a scalable, developer-friendly object storage service for businesses that need to move massive amounts of data without getting hit with huge fees.

Backblaze, Inc.'s Product/Service Portfolio

Backblaze, Inc.'s Operational Framework

The company's value creation is rooted in its proprietary, highly efficient infrastructure design, which allows it to maintain a significantly lower cost structure than competitors. This operational efficiency is what drives the company's ability to offer predictable, low-cost pricing.

• Backblaze Vault Architecture: This is the proprietary software layer that groups 20 Storage Pods together to form a single, highly durable unit.
• Reed-Solomon Erasure Coding: Data is split into 20 parts (shards)-17 data shards and 3 parity shards-and distributed across the 20 Storage Pods. This ensures data durability of 99.999999999% annually, meaning up to three entire servers can fail without data loss or unavailability.
• Storage Pods: These are custom-designed, high-density storage servers built from commodity, off-the-shelf components. A modern Storage Pod can hold up to 60 hard drives in a single chassis, which maximizes storage density and minimizes hardware cost and power consumption per terabyte.
• AI-Driven Network Flows: As of Q3 2025, traffic associated with 'neoclouds' (compute/AI providers) represents nearly one-quarter of total network flows, demonstrating the platform's utility as a high-performance data source for AI model training and inference.

Backblaze, Inc.'s Strategic Advantages

The company's strategy focuses on being the 'open cloud' alternative, positioning itself against the walled-garden models of the hyperscalers. This focus is paying off, with the company's full-year 2025 revenue guidance narrowed to between $145.4 million and $146.0 million, driven primarily by B2 Cloud Storage growth.

• Cost and Predictability: Independent analysis shows B2 Cloud Storage delivers up to 3.2x lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) compared to legacy cloud providers. This is a massive selling point, especially for data-intensive workflows.
• Open Cloud Ecosystem: The S3-compatible API and commitment to zero vendor lock-in allow businesses to easily integrate Backblaze with best-in-class compute, content delivery network (CDN), and AI services from partners like Vultr and Fastly.
• Enterprise-Grade Simplicity: Despite the complex back-end, the user experience is simple, earning it 'Easiest to Use' and 'Fastest Implementation' recognition in G2's Winter 2025 Report.
• Financial Trajectory: The company is on track to be adjusted free-cash-flow positive in Q4 2025, with Q3 2025 Adjusted EBITDA reaching $8.4 million, or a 23% margin, showing strong operating leverage from its efficient architecture.

To be fair, the Computer Backup segment's revenue growth was flat year-over-year in Q3 2025, so the B2 Cloud Storage segment, which grew by 28% year-over-year in Q3 2025, is defintely the core growth driver. Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE).

Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) How It Makes Money

Backblaze, Inc. makes money by providing simple, affordable, and reliable cloud storage services through two distinct, recurring revenue streams: a fixed-price, unlimited backup service for consumers and businesses, and a usage-based object storage platform for developers and enterprises.

The company's financial engine is increasingly driven by its high-growth, consumption-based cloud storage segment, which is capitalizing on the massive, data-intensive demands of the modern cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) era.

Backblaze, Inc.'s Revenue Breakdown

As of the third quarter of 2025, Backblaze's total revenue reached $37.2 million, marking a 14% year-over-year (YoY) increase. The revenue mix clearly shows the strategic shift and the primary growth driver for the business.

Here's the quick math: B2 Cloud Storage generated $20.7 million in Q3 2025, while the Computer Backup segment brought in $16.5 million. B2 is now the majority revenue stream and the clear growth engine.

Business Economics

The core of Backblaze's business model is a dual-product strategy that addresses two different customer needs with fundamentally different economic models. This approach helps diversify its customer base-from individual consumers to large-scale AI companies-while maintaining a focus on cost efficiency.

• Computer Backup (Fixed-Price Model): This service is a simple, all-inclusive, fixed-price subscription for unlimited storage on a single computer (PC or Mac). It's a high-volume, low-churn business built on predictability. The customer pays a flat monthly fee, currently around $9, and the company manages the risk that a small percentage of users will store massive amounts of data. This segment provides a stable, foundational revenue stream, but its growth is flat as of Q3 2025.
• B2 Cloud Storage (Consumption-Based Model): This is the high-growth object storage platform, competing directly with Amazon S3 and Azure Blob Storage. Its pricing is pay-as-you-go, charging customers for three things: storage, transactions (API calls), and data egress (downloads). The key competitive advantage is their 'open cloud' strategy, which includes a free egress policy. They charge only $0.01/GB for egress, but they offer free egress up to three times a customer's average monthly stored data, plus unlimited free egress when using partner Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare. This eliminates the massive, unpredictable 'vendor lock-in' fees that hyperscalers use, making B2 highly attractive for data-intensive workflows like AI model training and media hosting.

The B2 segment is the future; its 28% YoY growth in Q3 2025 shows customers are voting with their wallets for transparent, predictable pricing, especially for data transfer.

Backblaze, Inc.'s Financial Performance

Backblaze's recent financial results reflect a business that is successfully transitioning from a stable consumer backup company to a high-margin, growth-focused cloud platform. The focus is on increasing operating leverage-getting more profit from each dollar of revenue-and moving toward sustained profitability.

• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): Total ARR hit $147.2 million in Q3 2025, a 13% YoY increase, with B2 Cloud Storage ARR growing faster at 26%.
• Gross Margin: The GAAP gross margin expanded significantly to 62% in Q3 2025, up from 55% in the prior year, showing the operational efficiency gained from scale and data center optimization.
• Adjusted EBITDA: The company achieved an Adjusted EBITDA of $8.4 million, representing a strong 23% margin of revenue for Q3 2025, nearly doubling the margin from the same quarter last year.
• Net Revenue Retention (NRR): The NRR was 106% in Q3 2025. This means existing customers, on average, spent 6% more than they did a year ago, primarily driven by the B2 segment's NRR of 110%. This is a critical metric showing the business is expanding within its current customer base.
• Profitability Trajectory: The GAAP net loss narrowed dramatically to $3.8 million in Q3 2025, a 70% improvement YoY. Management expects to be adjusted free-cash-flow positive in Q4 2025, which is a major milestone for a growth company.

What this estimate hides is the variability in usage from large AI customers, which can cause quarterly fluctuations. Still, the trend toward profitability is defintely clear. For a deeper dive into the health of the balance sheet and cash flows, you should read Breaking Down Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) Market Position & Future Outlook

Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE) is strategically positioned as the cost-efficient, independent alternative in the cloud storage market, focusing on its high-growth B2 Cloud Storage segment to drive profitability. The company expects to generate total revenue between $145.4 million and $146.0 million for the full fiscal year 2025, with a critical goal of achieving adjusted free cash flow positivity by the fourth quarter of 2025.

Competitive Landscape

In the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud storage space, Backblaze competes against two distinct groups: the hyperscalers and the niche object storage providers. While the hyperscalers dominate the overall cloud market, Backblaze's B2 Cloud Storage targets the segment of developers and enterprises seeking predictable pricing and lower egress fees (data transfer costs). This is a defintely tough market, but the focus on value is resonating.

Here's the quick math: AWS's cloud market share alone is roughly 31% as of Q3 2024, showing the scale of the competition. Backblaze's strategy is not to compete on ecosystem breadth but on cost and simplicity, where its B2 offering is independently validated as being up to 3.2x more cost-effective than the larger providers.

Opportunities & Challenges

The company's future performance hinges on its ability to execute on its B2 growth strategy, particularly in emerging, data-intensive workloads like Artificial Intelligence (AI). The market is moving in their favor, but execution risk is real.

Industry Position

Backblaze occupies a high-value niche in the cloud storage industry: the 'independent cloud' provider. The company's core value proposition is transparency and simplicity, a direct counterpoint to the complex, tiered pricing and high data egress fees (data transfer out of the cloud) of the hyperscalers.

• Cost Leader: Positioning B2 Cloud Storage as a low-cost, high-performance alternative, especially for backup, archive, and content delivery network (CDN) workloads.

• AI-Ready: Actively aligning its B2 Overdrive product with the massive data demands of AI and ML, which is now a central driver of growth.

• Transparency Standard: Pioneering industry transparency with reports like Drive Stats and the new Performance Stats, which openly benchmark its performance against competitors like AWS S3 and Cloudflare R2.

• Customer Base: Serving over 500,000 customers across 175 countries, demonstrating global reach despite a smaller infrastructure footprint.

To understand the foundation of this strategy, you should review the Mission Statement, Vision, & Core Values of Backblaze, Inc. (BLZE).