Braze
“Can a cross-channel customer engagement platform become the system of record for every brand-to-consumer interaction in the AI era?”
Founded2011
HQNew York, NY, United States
Total raised~$175M private + $520M IPO
Latest roundIPO (November 2021)
Valuation~$6B at IPO
IndustryHorizontal SaaS / Customer Engagement
The story
Founded in 2011 as Appboy, the company rebranded to Braze in 2017 and positioned itself as the leading cross-channel customer engagement platform. Braze went public on Nasdaq in November 2021. Braze is not an embedded-finance company; it's a marketing/CRM SaaS whose only financial-stack touchpoints are a Stripe integration (for syncing customer billing data into the messaging platform — a data partnership, not payment acceptance) and a Capchase Pay-Monthly program offered to its own SaaS customers.
Last 12 months
Product timeline
2011
Founded in New York as Appboy, a mobile customer engagement platform.· founding
2017
Rebranded from Appboy to Braze.· pivot
2021
IPO on Nasdaq (BRZE) at $65/share, raising $520M, closing first day up 44%.· ipo
2024
Launched Braze Data Platform unifying data capabilities and partner ecosystem.· product
The stack
Lending
Capchase Pay — monthly installment financing offered to Braze customers to spread out SaaS subscription payments
Accounting gap: none