SVG Sit-Down: Backblaze's Gleb Budman Talks Products, Partnerships, and the Growth in Cloud Storage

SVG Sit-Down: Backblaze's Gleb Budman Talks Products, Partnerships, and the Growth in Cloud Storage The company's Scalable Application Keys received an NAB 2025 Product of the Year Award By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.

Friday, June 13, 2025 - 7:00 am

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As the M&E space evolves at a breakneck pace, Backblaze is making waves, thanks to new features, expanded partnerships, and a major push into AI and high-performance cloud (HPC) storage. SVG caught up with Backblaze CEO/co-founder Gleb Budman to talk about the company's NAB 2025 Product of the Year Award; its latest innovations, such as Overdrive and Scalable Application Keys; and how the company helps creative teams embrace flexible, cloud-first workflows without sacrificing performance or control.

Backblaze's Gleb Budman: We've got more than 500,000 customers and 4 exabytes under management. The best part is watching creative teams focus on being creative instead of worrying about infrastructure.

In general, what are you seeing in the M&E market today, and how is your company evolving to meet customer demands?

We're seeing strong momentum around modern cloud-first workflows in media and entertainment. Our partnerships let creative teams break free from traditional walled-garden systems and embrace remote workflows that actually work. We've got more than 500,000 customers and 4 exabytes under management now, which is pretty wild to think about. The best part is watching creative teams focus on being creative instead of worrying about infrastructure. That's what we're here for.

NAB 2025 in April was a big show for you. What were some of the highlights?

NAB was fantastic this year. We hosted a bunch of partner showcases where we got to show off some amazing projects we've been working on with companies like Twelve Labs, on AI-driven semantic search, and Mimir, on helping teams work with reliable storage.

A big highlight was winning the NAB Show 2025 Product of the Year Award for our Scalable Application Keys in the Cloud Computing and Storage category. It's a feature that's helping organizations manage massive amounts of data while keeping it secure and accessible. It's exciting to see our efforts making a real impact in the media-production space.

Can you provide a bit more detail on the Scalable Application Keys feature in Backblaze B2 cloud storage? As organizations manage more and more feeds from large networks of cameras and devices, how does this feature improve your offering for customers? And how does it reflect the evolution of the market and customer demands?

Companies are deploying cameras everywhere now, and they're keeping footage longer than ever before. But managing access to all that data can be a real headache, especially with growing security concerns and changing rules around data use.

That's where Scalable Application Keys comes in. You can now generate up to 10,000 unique access keys per minute. That means each camera, drone, or other device can get its own temporary, secure key, making it easier to manage access without sacrificing security. It's one of those features that sounds technical, but it actually makes life way easier for the teams managing all this gear.

We've seen Backblaze launch new partnerships and alliances in an effort to better serve customers. Why did you opt for a joint go-to-market partnership with media company CHESA? What will this offering entail?

CHESA has been a great partner for years, so this was about doubling down on what's already working. They know media workflows inside and out, and we know cloud storage. Put those together, and you get solutions that make sense for how media teams work.

Media workflows are pretty complex: you often need seamless collaboration, robust storage, and advanced systems integration working together. As content demands grow and technology evolves, media organizations need solutions that can scale, innovate, and empower teams to deliver faster and better content. We want to work with experts like CHESA to show our commitment to empowering media organizations with innovative, efficient, and secure solutions.

How does AI factor into your future roadmap? Tell us a bit about the recent PureNodal partnership and how it will help you accelerate AI at scale.

AI is the fastest-growing piece of our business. Our AI customer base grew 66% last quarter, and our data grew by 25 times. Backblaze is a great fit for AI use cases because we provide a high-performance, low-cost storage platform that supports the open cloud. You can use whatever GPU provider you want.

The PureNodal partnership is exciting because it combines our scalable foundation for AI and HPC workloads with their high-performance computing expertise. Together, we can unlock the full potential of AI by providing the flexibility to build with best-in-class tools and infrastructure.

Another big announcement was the release of Overdrive, your new high-performance cloud storage solution delivering terabit-speed throughput starting at just $15 per terabyte. How are you able to offer this kind of pricing, and why did it make sense to launch this new offering?

We've got a history of cost-leading innovation, but B2 Overdrive is a leap forward in achieving high performance at a fraction of the cost of hyperscalers. We're not starting from zero - we can leverage our existing assets - and that's how we can hit $15 per terabyte. Also, no egress fees and complex pricing tiers. There's no room for surprise pricing in this world of AI, machine learning, and high-performance computing.

After a sprint to the public cloud in the early part of this decade, we've seen a bit of a retrenchment back to on-premises for many broadcasters, and it seems that hybrid

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