Backblaze jumps 30% on $335M CoreWeave AI storage deal

Backblaze shares BLZE surged in trading on Tuesday after the company announced a $335 million (approx. R 5,7 billion), five-year storage agreement with AI-focused cloud provider CoreWeave.

The deal underscores rising demand for large-scale data infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence workloads.

The stock rose as much as 31% in the session, after the company said it will provide large-scale HDD-based storage capacity to support CoreWeave’s managed storage infrastructure.

CoreWeave shares, meanwhile, fell more than 3.5% amid a broader technology sector selloff.

The agreement is structured around traditional hard disk drive (HDD) storage, which uses spinning disks and is typically more cost-efficient than solid-state drive (SSD) alternatives.

$335M storage deal expands AI infrastructure capacity

Under the agreement, Backblaze will significantly scale storage capacity for CoreWeave to “multi-exabyte” levels. An exabyte is equivalent to 1 billion gigabytes.

The companies said the expansion will support CoreWeave’s AI Object Storage platform while allowing high-performance computing resources to remain focused on intensive AI workloads.

The integration is designed so that existing CoreWeave AI Object Storage customers can access new storage tiers immediately without code changes.

“Storage is the foundation every AI workflow is built on — without it, even the world's most powerful compute sits idle,” said Gleb Budman, co-founder and CEO, Backblaze. “We're pleased to work with CoreWeave on elements of their storage environment. This collaboration demonstrates how our platform can help organizations meet growing infrastructure demands.”

Backblaze gains validation in AI data ecosystem

The company said the agreement represents a meaningful commercial commitment and highlights its role in the expanding AI infrastructure ecosystem.

Backblaze currently serves more than 100,000 customers worldwide.

CoreWeave is described as one of the fastest-growing AI cloud platforms and serves nine of the top ten AI model providers, making the partnership a significant validation of Backblaze’s enterprise storage positioning.

The companies emphasized that storage plays a critical role across the AI lifecycle, including training, inference, checkpointing, data preparation, model outputs, and retrieval-augmented generation.

“Backblaze has built a reputation for making complex, HDD-based storage infrastructure reliable and easy-to-consume at scale,” said Nick Hoover, Vice President at CoreWeave. “We’re pleased to work with them as we continue expanding our platform and managed service offerings to support AI workloads at scale.”

AI-driven storage demand accelerates

The deal comes amid rapidly rising demand for data infrastructure driven by artificial intelligence adoption across industries. Hyperscalers are investing heavily in data center expansion, contributing to strong growth in cloud and storage markets.

A recent study cited by the company estimates the global AI data center market was valued at $147,3 billion (approx. R 2,5 trillion) in 2025 and is projected to reach $810,6 billion (approx. R 13,9 trillion) by 2033, growing at a compound annual rate of 23.9% from 2026 to 2033.

The report also noted that cloud platforms are expected to remain key drivers of this expansion as AI workloads continue to scale globally.