Braze Inc.

Braze Inc. is a New York-based marketing technology company founded in 2011 that delivers the Braze suite for customer engagement. Key platforms include Braze Cross-Channel Messaging, Braze Data Platform and BrazeAI, serving retail, media and tech brands.

Publicly traded (BRZE)

Founded: 2011

Headquarters: New York, New York, United States

Revenue: 100m_1b

Employees: 1k_5k

Website: https://www.braze.com

Products

Platforms

Suites

Milestones

  • 2026-01-20: Braze Launches New Shopify Partnership and eCommerce Features
  • 2026-01-20: Braze Announces Agreement to Acquire OfferFit - Braze
  • 2026-01-20: Braze Receives Series E Funding
  • 2025-09-30: Braze Unveils Powerful New Features to Supercharge ... - Braze
  • 2025-03-18: Braze Launches New Shopify Partnership and eCommerce Features
  • 2025-01-01: Braze Launches BrazeAI Suite for Enterprise Customer Engagement ...
  • 2021-11-19: Braze Announces Closing of Initial Public Offering - Braze
  • 2020-06-21: Braze Expands Products and Partnerships to Help Brands Nurture ...
  • 2017-09-19: Braze: A New Name and Leadership Position | Forrester Wave

Company history

  1. : Trading status: public (BRZE) — Braze began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker BRZE following its IPO. (former ticker: BRZE) Source Source

Company Wiki

Braze, Inc. (NASDAQ: BRZE) is a publicly traded, cloud-based customer engagement platform company headquartered in New York City. Founded in 2011 as Appboy, it provides multichannel marketing automation software enabling brands to orchestrate real-time, personalized interactions with consumers across mobile, email, web, SMS, and other digital channels. The company operates in the customer engagement platform (CEP) and multichannel marketing hub categories.

AI-generated reference entry from web research · Generated 2026-09-12. Citations identify available source support; claims without a citation are not independently verified.

Key Facts

  • Founded: 2011 (as Appboy) [1]
  • Headquarters: New York City, NY, USA [2]
  • Stock Symbol: NASDAQ: BRZE [12]
  • IPO Date: November 17, 2021 [1]
  • IPO Proceeds: $520 million; market valuation of $5.9 billion at debut [1]
  • Annual Revenue (FY ended Jan 31, 2026): $738.2 million
  • Global Offices: 15 offices across AMER, LATAM, EMEA, and APAC
  • Notable Acquisition: OfferFit (AI decisioning), $325 million, closed June 2025

Overview

Braze, Inc. operates a cloud-based customer engagement platform that facilitates interactions between consumers and brands worldwide [1]. The platform enables businesses to ingest and process customer data in real time, orchestrate cross-channel marketing campaigns, and optimize contextually relevant experiences at scale [2]. Core product offerings include the Canvas journey orchestration tool, segmentation and audience management, BrazeAI (the company's artificial intelligence suite), and a Braze Data Platform for unifying customer data [12, 19]. Channels supported include push notifications, email, in-app messaging, SMS/RCS, content cards, and WhatsApp [2, 12]. The platform uses a stream processing architecture designed to handle interactions with what the company reports as 8 billion monthly active users [19]. Revenue is generated primarily from subscription-based access to the platform [9]. Braze serves industries including retail and e-commerce, media and entertainment, financial services, and travel and hospitality [17].

History

Braze was co-founded in 2011 under the name Appboy by Bill Magnuson, Jon Hyman, and Mark Ghermezian, who met at a hackathon [6]. The company secured early seed funding in 2012 with Blumberg Capital leading the round [6]. In its early years, Appboy focused on mobile app engagement capabilities such as push notifications and in-app messaging [7]. A $20 million Series C round was led by Battery Ventures in 2016 [7]. In August 2017 the company received $50 million in Series D financing, and later that year rebranded from Appboy to Braze, signaling a strategic expansion beyond mobile into email, web, and additional channels [1, 7]. A Series E round of $80 million at a valuation of approximately $850 million followed in 2018, and the company also launched Braze Alloys, an integration network spanning over 45 partner applications [1]. By 2019 Braze had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue [1]. In total, Braze raised approximately $175 million in venture capital prior to its IPO, with investors including Battery Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, and ICONIQ Capital [7]. Braze filed for its IPO in October 2021 and began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker BRZE on November 17, 2021, raising $520 million at a market valuation of $5.9 billion [1]. In 2023, the company launched Sage AI by Braze, its branded AI capability suite [1]. In March 2025, Braze announced an agreement to acquire OfferFit, an AI decisioning company, for $325 million in a combination of cash and Class A common stock; the acquisition closed in June 2025 [41, 42].

Market Position

Braze competes in the customer engagement platform (CEP) and multichannel marketing hub categories. The company was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs for three consecutive years, including 2023, 2024, and 2025, with Gartner citing Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute [22, 23]. Braze was also recognized as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q3 2024, and as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Cross-Channel Marketing Hubs, Q1 2023 [43]. The company was voted a G2 'Best of Marketing and Digital Advertising Software Product' in 2025 and holds a 4.5-star rating across over 1,700 verified reviews on G2 [32, 35]. Notable named customers include FanDuel, Intuit, MAX (HBO), Venmo, Zalando, Burger King, Grubhub, NASCAR, the NBA, OkCupid, Skyscanner, and PureGym, among others [1, 25]. For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2026, Braze reported annual revenue of $738.2 million [19]. As of a trailing twelve-month period ending April 2026, PitchBook recorded Braze revenue at $787 million [17].

Competition

Braze's primary competitors in the multichannel marketing hub and customer engagement platform space include Salesforce Marketing Cloud (rebranded as Agentforce Marketing), Adobe Experience Cloud, Iterable, CleverTap, MoEngage, and Klaviyo [7, 58]. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a commonly referenced enterprise alternative, particularly for organizations already standardized on the Salesforce ecosystem; its learning curve and implementation complexity are generally described as steeper than Braze's [59]. Iterable is widely cited as the closest direct functional competitor, serving similar mid-market and enterprise lifecycle marketing use cases; on G2, Braze holds approximately 4.5 stars versus Iterable's 4.4 [52]. CleverTap and MoEngage are positioned as mobile-first alternatives; in the mobile-first customer engagement space, Braze also competes with Airship (formerly Urban Airship) [7, 52]. Braze scores higher than Salesforce Marketing Cloud on G2 (approximately 4.5 versus 4.0 stars), with reviewers citing stronger ease of use and real-time engagement, while SFMC is credited with deeper enterprise data integration capabilities [56]. A recurring theme in third-party comparisons is that Braze's pricing model—based on data consumption and message throughput—can be a differentiating factor, particularly for teams with large data volumes [36, 59].

Additional Links

Editorial note: Exact employee headcount as of the most recent reporting period varies across sources (Tracxn: 2,319; PitchBook: 1,988; Getlatka: ~2,100); none could be confirmed against a primary SEC filing in this session, so no single figure was asserted in key_facts. The 'North Star' acquisition cited by Tracxn could not be independently verified in the sources retrieved and was therefore omitted.