Backblaze (BLZE) Stock Jumps 44% As CoreWeave Bets Big on HDD Storage

TLDR

• Backblaze stock jumped 44% to $11.70 after announcing a $335 million, five-year storage deal with CoreWeave
• The contract involves providing multi-exabyte HDD-based storage capacity to support CoreWeave’s AI workloads
• The deal dwarfs Backblaze’s full 2025 cloud storage revenue of $79.9 million
• Two analysts upgraded the stock following the news — Craig-Hallum set a $16 price target, Citizens raised its target to $14
• BLZE is now up roughly 150% year-to-date, while the Russell 3000 is up just 7.2% over the same period

Backblaze stock had a day most investors only dream about on Tuesday, rocketing 44% to $11.70 after the company announced a blockbuster storage deal with AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave.

Backblaze, Inc., BLZE

Under the five-year agreement, CoreWeave will pay Backblaze $335 million for multi-exabyte storage capacity to support its AI workloads. CoreWeave handles the hardware and capacity side, while Backblaze runs the storage software and operations.

To put that number in context: Backblaze posted just $79.9 million in cloud storage revenue for all of 2025. The deal is nearly four times that in a single contract.

Tuesday’s 44% jump was actually the stock’s second-best session of the year. On May 5, BLZE surged 64% after reporting strong Q1 earnings and annual recurring revenue growth.

Q1 2026 earnings also came in well ahead of expectations. Backblaze reported EPS of $0.04, against a forecasted loss of $0.0043, with revenue of $38.7 million beating the $37.79 million estimate.

Analysts Upgrade, Raise Price Targets

The CoreWeave announcement triggered a wave of analyst activity. William Blair’s Jason Ader upgraded Backblaze to Market Perform from Underperform — just months after downgrading it — calling the deal “meaningful validation” of Backblaze’s positioning as a core HDD-based storage layer for AI infrastructure.

Craig-Hallum went further, upgrading the stock to Buy from Hold with a $16 price target.

Citizens also raised its price target to $14 from $8, maintaining a Market Outperform rating. Analyst Rustam Kanga cited the CoreWeave deal as validation of Backblaze’s AI storage positioning for neocloud providers shopping for third-party storage partners.

CoreWeave VP Nick Hoover credited Backblaze with building a “reputation for making complex, HDD-based storage infrastructure reliable and easy-to-consume at scale.”

HDD Storage Finds Its Footing in AI

Backblaze’s platform runs on hard disk drives — cheaper than flash memory but slower. For a while, that was a knock against it. This deal suggests HDD storage still has a real role to play in AI data centers.

Not everyone in the storage world had a good Tuesday, though. Hard-drive makers Western Digital and Seagate fell 8.1% and 4.9%, respectively, as investors rotated out of hardware names after a strong Q2 run.

CoreWeave itself slipped 5% on the day, a reminder that one side of a deal often pays for the other’s party.

BLZE is now up approximately 150.2% year-to-date. The stock is trading near its 52-week high of $11.85, with a market cap of $699.77 million. InvestingPro flags the stock as currently appearing overvalued relative to its Fair Value.

Citizens has a separate $180 price target on CoreWeave with a Market Outperform rating.

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