AI Storage Partnership
Backblaze Inks $335 Million Multi-Exabyte Storage Deal with CoreWeave for AI
Backblaze and CoreWeave have signed a five-year, $335 million storage deal that makes Backblaze a primary provider of large-scale, cost-efficient storage for CoreWeave's AI infrastructure, according to Calgary Sun. The agreement covers multiple exabytes of data — one exabyte equals one million terabytes — and positions Backblaze as a critical backbone for AI workloads that do not need expensive, high-speed flash storage.
Backblaze shares jumped 20% in intraday trading on June 23 after the announcement, according to Edmonton Sun. CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator noted that the shift from AI training to inference makes specialized infrastructure essential, requiring a tiered approach to storage.
A $335 Million Bet on Tiered AI Storage
The deal was officially signed on June 16, 2026, according to an SEC Form 8-K filing. CoreWeave will use Backblaze's hard disk drive (HDD) storage for "warm" data — things like checkpoints, data preparation, and retrieval tasks. This frees up CoreWeave's faster, costlier flash storage for active AI compute jobs.
Backblaze CEO Gleb Budman put it plainly: "Without it, even the world's most powerful compute sits idle," according to Recorder. The logic is simple — at this scale, a one-cent price difference per gigabyte adds up to $10 million across a single exabyte of data. Backblaze charges $6.95 per terabyte per month, roughly one-fifth the price of Amazon S3.
CoreWeave's LOTA Technology Enables Seamless Integration
Customers will not need to rewrite any code to access the new storage tiers. CoreWeave's patented LOTA — Local Object Transport Accelerator — acts as a distributed cache that sits between the customer and the storage layer. It scales automatically with cluster size, according to Goderich Signal Star.
CoreWeave Vice President Nick Hoover praised Backblaze for making "HDD-based storage infrastructure reliable and easy-to-consume at scale." The integration means that existing CoreWeave AI Object Storage users get new service tiers immediately, with no disruption to their current workflows.
Backblaze Issues Warrants, CoreWeave Gains Equity Stake
As part of the deal structure, Backblaze issued CoreWeave two stock warrants. The first covers 3,053,314 shares. The second covers 1,141,562 shares. Both are priced at $7.60 per share, according to SEC filings cited by Montreal Gazette.
The warrants give CoreWeave a financial stake in Backblaze's growth. For Backblaze, the deal delivers a large, guaranteed revenue stream over five years. Some orders under the agreement extend to seven years, locking in stability as Backblaze competes against cloud giants like Amazon and Google.
CoreWeave's Rapid Rise Comes With Real Risks
CoreWeave added to the Nasdaq-100 on June 22, 2026 — just one day before this deal went public. The company reported $2.08 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, up 112% year over year. But it also posted a $740 million net loss and carries roughly $35.1 billion in total debt, according to Edmonton Sun.
Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald remain bullish, saying the market is "woefully undervaluing" CoreWeave's backlog, which could hit $131 billion by late June. But critics at Seeking Alpha call CRWV a debt trap, citing 9%-plus interest rates on its borrowings. The company also faces a securities fraud class action alleging it overstated its ability to meet customer demand, according to Calgary Sun.
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