# Gleb Budman

> Gleb Budman is the co-founder, CEO and board chair of Backblaze. Born in Saint Petersburg and raised in the United States, he studied mechanical engineering and business at UC Berkeley before working in technology product leadership. He helped build Backblaze from a five-founder apartment startup into a Nasdaq-listed cloud storage business, emphasizing affordable storage, financial discipline and public sharing of the company’s engineering and business lessons.

- **Role:** Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson of the Board at Backblaze
- **Organizations:** Backblaze, SonicWall, MailFrontier, Kendara, Excite@Home, GE
- **From:** Saint Petersburg, Russia
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BS, Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, MBA, University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business
- **Known for:** Co-founded Backblaze and led it from an apartment startup to its 2021 Nasdaq listing., Led a business serving customers in more than 175 countries., Helped commercialize the internally developed storage platform through the launch of B2 in 2015.

## Career timeline

- **1995** — Completed his mechanical engineering degree at UC Berkeley; his first job after college was at GE in the nuclear industry.
- **1999** — Earned an MBA at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
- **Before 2007** — Held senior product and management roles at Kendara, Excite@Home, MailFrontier and SonicWall.
- **2007** — Co-founded Backblaze and became CEO; the company was incorporated April 20.
- **2009** — Joined Backblaze’s board; the company published its Storage Pod hardware design.
- **2012** — Announced a $5 million investment from TMT Investments after five years of bootstrapping.
- **2015** — Announced Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage on September 22.
- **2021** — Became board chair in January; Backblaze began trading on Nasdaq as BLZE on November 11.
- **2023** — Launched Open Sourcing the IPO; explained shareholders’ vote to eliminate the dual-class share structure.
- **2026** — Announced a five-year, $335 million storage agreement with CoreWeave on June 23.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Backblaze and led it from an apartment startup to its 2021 Nasdaq listing.
- Led a business serving customers in more than 175 countries.
- Helped commercialize the internally developed storage platform through the launch of B2 in 2015.
- Published practical accounts of bootstrapping, billing, fundraising and IPO preparation.
- Named as an inventor on multiple email-security patents listed on his LinkedIn profile.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Announced the five-year, multi-exabyte, $335 million CoreWeave agreement covering portions of CoreWeave’s managed storage infrastructure.
- **2026-08** — In second-quarter results, Backblaze reported 34% year-over-year B2 Cloud Storage revenue growth and 18% overall revenue growth; Budman emphasized capacity storage for AI workloads.

## Links

- Website: https://glebbudman.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glebbudman
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/glebbudman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glebbudman

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/gleb-budman
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-26