Braze, Inc. (BRZE): Business Model Canvas [Dec-2025 Updated]

You're looking to understand the engine driving Braze, Inc.'s growth, and after two decades analyzing software plays, I can tell you it boils down to locking in high-value enterprise customers with a mission-critical platform. Their model is built on a sticky, subscription base that brought in $570.3 million in revenue for fiscal year 2025, supported by a massive $398.4 million spend on sales and marketing to fuel that acquisition. What really matters is their ability to keep those customers happy, evidenced by a 117% dollar-based net retention rate last quarter, meaning existing clients spend significantly more each year. Below, we break down the nine essential blocks of the Braze, Inc. Business Model Canvas, showing exactly how they turn real-time data into recurring dollars, so you can see the whole picture.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Key Partnerships

You're looking at the ecosystem that makes Braze's platform work at scale, which is critical given the complexity of enterprise deployments. The partnerships aren't just nice-to-haves; they are foundational to data ingestion and execution.

Cloud Infrastructure Providers like AWS and Google Cloud Platform

Braze Cloud Data Ingestion is a key part of the Braze Data Platform, offering direct connections to major cloud services. This architecture is important because the underlying infrastructure providers are seeing massive growth, which benefits the entire ecosystem. For instance, in the second quarter of 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) captured 30 percent share of the global market, generating $30.9 billion in total sales for that quarter, putting its annual run rate at $124 billion. Google Cloud, the third-largest provider, reached a record 13 percent global market share in Q2 2025, with sales of $13.6 billion. Recently, in December 2025, AWS and Google Cloud announced a jointly engineered multicloud network service to simplify cross-cloud connectivity, which speaks to the increasing need for interoperability that Braze customers demand.

Strategic Technology Partners like Shopify for E-commerce Integration

The integration with Shopify, which rolled out features to Shopify customers in the first quarter of 2025, is a prime example of a strategic technology partnership driving specific vertical growth. This collaboration helps brands combine Shopify's commerce capabilities with Braze's engagement tools for personalized shopping experiences. Brands like e.l.f. Beauty and Hugo Boss are noted users of Braze within their e-commerce setups.

Solution Partners for Implementation and Consulting

Expert agencies are necessary to extract the full value from the platform, especially for advanced tactics. Massive Rocket, for example, is a 3x Braze Orbit Partner with 90+ experts and 150 Braze certifications. They report having completed over 200 implementations. Propel is highlighted for its technical depth, focusing on lifecycle automation and combining Braze with proprietary frameworks.

Here's a look at some of the partner ecosystem metrics:

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) like Segment and mParticle for Data Ingestion

Integrating with CDPs like mParticle ensures that audience segments created there can be synced directly into Braze for campaign segmentation within Canvas. The platform's overall health, which relies on clean data ingestion, is reflected in its trailing 12-month Dollar-based net retention rate of 111% as of January 31, 2025.

The integration mechanisms include:

• Syncing mParticle audiences to Braze for Canvas segmentation.
• Sending Braze user interaction data to mParticle via Currents.
• Data mapping via the embedded kit integration or server-to-server API.

System Integrators for Complex Enterprise Deployments

The need for system integrators is underscored by the complexity of enterprise rollouts. Braze ended fiscal year 2025 with 2,342 total customers, 262 of which were large customers generating $500,000 or more in ARR. The hiring of Ed McDonald, formerly EVP at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as the new CRO in July 2025 suggests a continued focus on scaling enterprise deployments, which often involve complex integrations like Salesforce connectors.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Key Activities

You're trying to map out the core engine of Braze, Inc., the activities that actually generate their value proposition. It's not just about selling software; it's about the intense, ongoing work behind the scenes to keep that real-time promise.

Research and Development (R&D) to enhance the platform is a massive commitment. For fiscal year 2025, the reported spend on this activity was $\mathbf{\$134.0 \text{ million}}$.

A significant part of that R&D focus is on developing and integrating AI/ML capabilities. This was strategically accelerated by the agreement to acquire OfferFit, an AI decisioning startup, for a purchase price of $\mathbf{\$325 \text{ million}}$. This integration is designed to embed reinforcement learning agents directly into the platform, moving beyond static rules toward autonomous optimization.

The platform's core strength relies on maintaining a proprietary, real-time stream processing architecture. This architecture is built on technologies like Snowflake, Kafka, MongoDB, and Redis, allowing data to be processed as soon as it is generated, not in batches. This real-time capability has specific operational limits that define its scale:

Global sales and marketing efforts to acquire new enterprise customers are non-stop. This activity drives the subscription revenue growth, which was the dominant component of total revenue. For instance, in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025, subscription revenue hit $\mathbf{\$153.9 \text{ million}}$. The company also focuses on increasing sales to existing customers, evidenced by a Dollar-based net retention rate of $\mathbf{111\%}$ for customers with $\text{ARR}$ of $\mathbf{\$500,000}$ or more in the trailing twelve months ended July 31, 2025 (based on Q2 FY2026 guidance context).

Finally, delivering high-touch professional and implementation services supports customer onboarding and adoption, which is critical for long-term retention. While subscription revenue is the main focus, the services component is still active:

• Q2 FY2025 Professional Services Revenue: $\mathbf{\$5.5 \text{ million}}$.
• Q4 FY2025 Professional Services Revenue: $\mathbf{\$6.5 \text{ million}}$.
• Q1 FY2025 Professional Services Revenue: $\mathbf{\$5.4 \text{ million}}$.

If onboarding takes 14+ days, churn risk rises.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Key Resources

You're looking at the core assets that make Braze, Inc. a tough competitor in the customer engagement space. These aren't just ideas; they are tangible capabilities backed by recent financial commitments and platform scale.

Proprietary, highly scalable real-time data streaming architecture.

The platform's architecture is built to handle massive, real-time data flows. This capability supports a vast user base, which is a key resource in itself.

• Platform supports over 7.4 billion monthly active users.
• The platform serves over 2,000+ customers.
• Over 300 customers send over 1 billion messages per year.

BrazeAI™ and AI Decisioning Studio for autonomous personalization.

The investment in artificial intelligence is clear, with specific product launches and demonstrable customer impact to show for it. The Decisioning Studio was a late 2025 focus.

• BrazeAI Decisioning Studio launched in September 2025.
• The Decisioning Studio uses reinforcement learning to optimize KPIs.
• Kayo Sports saw potential actions increase from 300 to 1.2 million using the Decisioning Studio.

Global technical talent for R&D and platform maintenance.

You can see the commitment to technical talent reflected directly in the operating expenses, showing where the money goes to maintain and advance the platform.

Here's the quick math on R&D investment for the third quarter of fiscal 2025:

This level of investment definitely signals a focus on engineering resources.

Extensive first-party customer data and behavioral signals.

The value of the platform is intrinsically linked to the data flowing through it, evidenced by strong customer retention metrics, even as the overall rate softened slightly.

• Dollar-based net retention for all customers (trailing 12 months ended January 31, 2025) was 111%.
• Dollar-based net retention for customers with ARR of $500,000 or more (trailing 12 months ended January 31, 2025) was 114%.
• Total customers as of October 31, 2024, stood at 2,211.

Strong brand recognition as a Gartner Leader in Multichannel Marketing Hubs.

Industry validation is a key resource for trust and sales velocity. Braze, Inc. has secured top-tier recognition consistently.

• Named a Gartner Leader in Multichannel Marketing Hubs for the third consecutive year.
• Voted a G2 "Best of Marketing and Digital Advertising Software Product" in 2025.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Value Propositions

You're looking at the core reasons why brands choose Braze, Inc. over the competition. The main draw is the promise of real-time, cross-channel orchestration from a single platform. This means you aren't stitching together five different tools to send an email, an in-app message, an SMS, and a push notification; it's all managed in one place, helping you move faster.

A huge part of the value is breaking down data silos for a unified customer view. When you can act on any amount of data from any source in real time, you stop guessing what the customer wants next. This capability supports massive scale; as of July 31, 2025, Braze was handling engagement for 7.4 Billion Monthly Active Users, up from the 7.2 billion MAUs reported as of January 2025. That's serious throughput for your customer base.

To manage that scale and complexity, Braze is pushing hard on automation. The value here is AI-powered decisioning to optimize the next best action for each user. They unveiled the BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™ at Forge 2025, which uses reinforcement learning to autonomously experiment and learn from every interaction. This is designed to deliver that 1:1 personalization at the scale you need.

Honestly, the payoff for all this tech is faster time-to-market for complex, personalized marketing campaigns. When you can orchestrate across channels and use AI to optimize, you cut down the lead time from idea to execution. Here's a quick look at the scale Braze is built to handle, based on recent figures:

The platform's native architecture supports these capabilities directly, which is a key differentiator for many users. You get the ability to build and maintain engaging relationships without compromising on speed or personalization depth. This is what drives the reported financial results, like the 22.7% year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 Fiscal 2025, reaching $152.1 million in revenue.

The core functional value propositions that enable this performance include:

• Cross-channel messaging and journey orchestration.
• AI-powered experimentation and optimization.
• Turnkey integrations with over 140 tools.
• Support for in-product channels like Content Cards.

If onboarding takes 14+ days, churn risk rises, so the ease of integration and speed-to-value is critical to realizing the full financial benefit. Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Customer Relationships

You see how the relationship structure scales from high-touch for the biggest spenders to more scalable resources for everyone else. It's a tiered approach to keep that revenue expanding year over year.

Dedicated account management and Customer Success teams focus on enterprise clients, ensuring complex integrations and high-value use cases are fully adopted. This high-touch service is critical for maintaining expansion revenue from your largest customers.

The dollar-based net retention rate for all customers was 117% for the trailing 12 months ended April 30, 2024. For customers with annual recurring revenue of $500,000 or more as of that date, the rate was 119%.

Here's a quick look at how customer expansion metrics trended:

Partner-led implementation and consulting services are a key part of the technical onboarding for many brands. These Solutions Partners specialize in integrating customer data, implementing features like Canvas Flow, and building full-funnel engagement journeys. This ecosystem helps reduce the burden on internal teams and speeds up time-to-value.

For self-service support and continuous education, Braze relies on community and documentation resources. You can find the Developer Guide and User Guide available online. The flagship customer engagement conference, Braze Forge 2025, ran from September 29-October 1, 2025, in Las Vegas, offering certification testing and hands-on learning. The event structure included tracks like Build with Braze and Master the Craft.

The support structure includes:

• Dedicated account management for top-tier accounts.
• Customer Success Managers for platform optimization.
• Partner ecosystem for technical implementation.
• Braze Forge for in-person, deep-dive training.
• Documentation for independent troubleshooting.

If onboarding takes 14+ days, churn risk rises.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Channels

You're looking at how Braze, Inc. gets its product in front of customers, which is a mix of direct selling muscle and a growing partner network, plus digital outreach. Honestly, the numbers from the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025, give you a clear picture of where their sales focus is landing.

The direct sales motion is clearly geared toward landing and expanding within larger accounts. You can see this in the growth of their highest-tier customers. The company ended fiscal year 2025 with 247 customers having Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $500,000 or more, a solid jump from 202 the prior year. Overall, total customers reached 2,296 as of January 31, 2025. This enterprise focus is key, as those large accounts represented a significant portion of their revenue base.

The Global Partner Ecosystem, branded as Braze Alloys, is definitely a channel for both sales reach and service delivery. It's designed to extend their capabilities through technology integrations and solution providers. As of 2025, the Technology Partnership side of Braze Alloys offers over 140 integrations, covering areas like data infrastructure and channel extensions.

Digital channels are the baseline for awareness and lead generation. While specific website traffic or content download numbers aren't public, the company's consistent output of industry reports and content marketing is how they keep their platform top-of-mind digitally. This supports the direct sales team by warming up prospects before engagement.

Industry events, especially the annual customer conference, serve as a major channel for customer retention, education, and brand reinforcement. Forge 2025, held September 29-October 1 in Las Vegas, brought together a significant audience. The event featured more than 100 speakers from major brands like McDonald's, Walmart, and The Walt Disney Company. To give you a sense of past event effectiveness, at Forge 2024, 98% of attendees enjoyed the event, and 245 people earned a Braze certification onsite.

Here are some key takeaways from the Forge 2025 focus areas, which show what they push through this channel:

• Focus on building a modern, AI-enabled marketing tech stack.
• Exploring generative AI and AI decisioning capabilities.
• Strategies for collaboration between Marketing and technical teams.
• Discussions on driving growth and loyalty through customer-centricity.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Customer Segments

You're looking at the core of Braze, Inc.'s revenue engine, which is heavily weighted toward the largest B2C spenders. These are the customers who need to move massive amounts of data and messages in real time.

The customer base is segmented by high value, focusing on large B2C enterprises in high-growth sectors like Media, Fintech, and Retail. The survey data from late 2024 covering 2,300 marketing leaders included quotas for CPG, financial services, health and wellness, media and entertainment, retail and Ecommerce, and QSR and on-demand food/beverage delivery.

The platform targets digitally native brands that demand high-volume, real-time messaging capabilities. For instance, Black Friday-Cyber Monday volume hit a record of 50B messages, showing the platform's capacity for peak load.

Global companies form another key segment, needing a platform that handles cross-geography customer engagement. The platform supports engagement across regions like The Americas, APAC, and EMEA.

Here's a look at the key metrics defining the high-value segment as of late 2025, which is where the majority of the Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) comes from.

The focus on enterprise customers is clear, with names like Shake Shack, Taco Bell, CVS, and Etsy cited as users of the platform for targeted campaigns and transactional messaging.

You can see the focus on the high-value tier through these points:

• Customers with Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $500,000 or more totaled 282 as of Q2 FY2026.
• The company has 234 customers with ARR >$500K contributing 61% of ARR as of Q3 2025.
• The number of customers with ARR exceeding $500,000 increased to 262 as of April 30, 2025 (Q1 FY2026).
• Dollar-based net retention for customers with ARR of $500,000 or more was 111% for the trailing 12 months ended July 31, 2025.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Cost Structure

You're looking at the major drains on Braze, Inc.'s operating budget as of late 2025, focusing on the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025 (FY2025). The cost structure is heavily weighted toward growth initiatives and the talent required to run a hyperscale cloud platform.

The largest single category of expense is personnel, which includes the significant non-cash charge of stock-based compensation (SBC). For FY2025, personnel costs, driven in part by SBC of $114.3 million, represent the biggest component of the overall operating expenses. This is typical for a high-growth SaaS company where retaining top engineering and sales talent is paramount.

To fuel the top-line growth, Braze, Inc. commits substantial resources to customer acquisition and retention. Sales and Marketing (S&M) expenses were reported at $398.4 million in FY2025. This high spend is necessary to drive the reported subscription revenue growth, which reached $570.3 million in FY2025. Honestly, you have to spend to acquire the next cohort of large customers.

Innovation and platform development require heavy investment in Research and Development (R&D). For the same fiscal year, R&D investment totaled $134.0 million. This spending supports the continuous enhancement of the customer engagement platform, including the integration of newer AI capabilities like those seen with the OfferFit acquisition.

The platform's operational foundation relies on significant third-party infrastructure. These are your cloud infrastructure and hosting costs, primarily with providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), necessary for processing customer data at the scale Braze, Inc. operates at. These variable costs scale directly with usage and data volume.

Here's a quick look at the major operating expense buckets for FY2025:

• High Sales and Marketing (S&M) expenses to drive growth.
• Significant investment in Research and Development (R&D).
• Personnel costs, including stock-based compensation (SBC).
• Cloud infrastructure and hosting costs for data processing.

To put the scale of these expenditures into perspective, consider the breakdown of the largest operating expense categories for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025:

The ongoing cost of delivering the service involves several key operational expenses that you need to track closely. If onboarding takes 14+ days, churn risk rises, which impacts the efficiency of that S&M spend. The core operational costs include:

• Data egress and compute charges from cloud providers.
• Salaries and benefits for the global workforce.
• Sales commissions tied to new and renewal bookings.
• Amortization of capitalized software development costs.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

Braze, Inc. (BRZE) - Canvas Business Model: Revenue Streams

You're looking at the core money-making engine for Braze, Inc. as of late 2025, and it's heavily weighted toward recurring software fees. This is where the platform's value translates directly into the books.

The primary revenue driver is the platform subscription fee. For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025, Subscription Revenue totaled $570.3 million. This dwarfs the secondary stream, which covers implementation, training, and consulting services, bringing in $23.1 million for the same fiscal year. Honestly, the services component is small enough that it's really just an enabler for the main subscription sale.

Here's a quick look at the top-line revenue components for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2025:

The long-term commitment from customers is visible in the deferred revenue line, which speaks to the multi-year contracts you see in the enterprise space. As of January 31, 2025, the total Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) stood at $793.1 million. Of that RPO, the current portion-revenue expected to be recognized in less than one year-was $505.2 million as of that same date. That's a solid backlog supporting near-term revenue visibility.

The subscription model isn't just a flat fee; it ties directly into customer usage, which is a key part of how they scale revenue with customer success. This usage-based pricing model is tied to several metrics that drive the billable amount:

• Data points: A billable unit measured by session starts, session ends, custom events, or purchases recorded against a user profile.
• Message sends: Specifically for channels like SMS, billing is per message segment, while RCS messages are charged per message.
• Data volume: Usage graphs on the Billing page help monitor data point consumption across apps and event sources.

To be defintely clear on data points, every attribute set on an end user profile at one point in time counts as a single data point, though default data like push tokens aren't counted. If you're managing your spend, you'll want to focus on only updating changing data to keep that usage down.

Finance: review the RPO breakdown against the Q1 2026 forecast by end of next week.