Backblaze (BLZE) Bank of America 2026 Global Technology Conference summary

Company evolution and market positioning

• Founded in 2007, initially focused on cloud backup, later building proprietary cloud infrastructure to support this service.

• Shifted focus to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with Backblaze B2, now the dominant business segment.

• Serves both AI builders and Neoclouds, providing essential, independent, high-performance storage infrastructure.

• Offers a white-label version of B2 for Neoclouds, enabling them to integrate storage into their offerings.

• Perception lags reality; transitioned from small business focus to signing multi-million dollar contracts.

Competitive advantages and customer pain points

• Offers storage at 1/5 the price of Amazon S3, with free egress and broad connectivity.

• Enables customers to avoid data lock-in with hyperscalers, supporting multi-cloud and AI workflows.

• Provides high throughput and efficient data movement, critical for AI training and inferencing.

• Serves as a key offload for customers facing flash storage supply constraints and rising costs.

AI market traction and growth

• One in three new bookings now comes from AI customers, with 76% growth in AI customer base.

• Closed a $1 million ARR AI deal in 11 days, reflecting urgency in the market.

• Signed contracts ranging from six-figure to eight-figure deals, with AI data volumes expected to grow exponentially.

• Estimates $14 billion opportunity in the high-performance data lake segment for Neoclouds.