Braze (BRZE) Citi’s 2026 Global TMT Conference summary

Financial performance and outlook

• Bookings were strong and globally consistent, with all major regions contributing at high levels.

• Organic CRPO growth stepped down to 23% due to seasonality, but bookings momentum continued into Q2 and the pipeline for the second half is robust.

• Revenue reclassification from subscription to professional services reflects better alignment with customer demand for advisory services, not a shift in business strategy.

• Gross margin seasonality remains, with Q4 seeing higher infrastructure costs, but new AI products are expected to be accretive to margins.

• Operating income margin guidance was raised from 8% to 8.3% for the full year, with investments in sales capacity and Forge event factored in.

Product innovation and AI advancements

• Accelerated product roadmap delivered new features like Agent Console, Operator, and Decisioning Studio Go ahead of schedule.

• Many new capabilities are already in beta or general availability, emphasizing real-time delivery over future promises.

• Operator enables rapid campaign building and advanced content optimization, driving significant performance improvements for customers.

• AI-driven tools like Content Optimizer have shown over 80% increases in click and conversion rates in customer tests.

• The Braze Data Platform and Action Credits model support flexible, data-driven marketing strategies and AI adoption.

Market dynamics and customer adoption

• Competitive positioning is strong, especially against legacy marketing clouds, with continued share gains in the enterprise segment.

• Demand for advanced advisory services and technical account management is rising due to increased complexity and adversarial market conditions.

• AI and cross-channel strategies are now central to every deal cycle, with Operator and MCP server productivity gains critical to customer decisions.

• Adoption bottlenecks include the need for more data integration and activation of additional messaging channels globally.

• Enhanced automation and monitoring, such as Agentic Standards and dynamic QA, are being developed to support the rapid pace of campaign creation and evolving system interactions.