Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Backblaze co-founder and CEO Gleb Budman on the RAISE Summit stage: 20 years ago, people told him it was impossible to compete with Amazon in cloud storage.
He bootstrapped anyway — no VC war chest — and took Backblaze public. He's still CEO today, which the moderator notes is rare for founders post-IPO.
Now Backblaze is repositioning for the AI era: 500K+ customers, 175 countries, a $335M CoreWeave deal, and a founder program (Flamethrower) aimed at AI-native startups building on B2 Cloud Storage. Recorded at RAISE Summit, alongside Cyrille Saint Olive (Google Cloud), Luke Pappas (NEA) and Shahab Shafieehanjani (RAISE).
Backblaze co-founder and CEO Gleb Budman on the RAISE Summit stage: 20 years ago, people told him it was impossible to compete with Amazon in cloud storage.
He bootstrapped anyway — no VC war chest — and took Backblaze public. He's still CEO today, which the moderator notes is rare for founders post-IPO.
Now Backblaze is repositioning for the AI era: 500K+ customers, 175 countries, a $335M CoreWeave deal, and a founder program (Flamethrower) aimed at AI-native startups building on B2 Cloud Storage. Recorded at RAISE Summit, alongside Cyrille Saint Olive (Google Cloud), Luke Pappas (NEA) and Shahab Shafieehanjani (RAISE).
