The cloud storage platform Backblaze, Inc. has announced its participation as a sponsor at the upcoming RAISE Summit, scheduled for July 8-9, 2026, at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, France. This event is set to bring together over 9,000 leaders, founders, investors, and decision-makers from more than 2,000 companies in the artificial intelligence sector.

Keynote Participation

Gleb Budman, Co-founder and CEO of Backblaze, will take part in a panel discussion on sovereign cloud strategies on the summit's opening day. The session will explore how new cloud operators and enterprise AI teams are rethinking their infrastructure architecture, particularly as data control, predictable costs, and performance for GPU-scale workloads become critical factors. Budman will share insights from Backblaze's experience as an independent storage platform capable of delivering the high-throughput and burst-ready performance required for AI pipelines, while also meeting customer demands for scale and cost-efficiency.

Strategic Infrastructure Insights

Budman emphasized that the infrastructure decisions being made today will determine which AI strategies ultimately succeed. He noted that sovereign cloud is more than just a compliance option; it is fundamentally about control over data. This entails having the ability to access storage without incurring high egress fees or facing vendor lock-in, alongside infrastructure engineered specifically for the behavioral patterns of AI workloads.

Supporting AI Innovation

During the summit, Budman will also serve as a final-round judge for the RAISE the STAKES AI startup competition. With a prize pool exceeding €10 million and attracting applications from over 1,500 startups, this is one of the world's largest competitions of its kind. James Leaverton, Director of Startups and Developer Relations at Backblaze, will act as a preliminary judge for the cloud infrastructure track.

Expanding AI Infrastructure Footprint

Backblaze has been actively expanding its presence in the AI infrastructure domain. In June 2026, the company entered into a five-year, $335 million multi-exabyte data storage agreement with CoreWeave. This partnership involves providing a hard disk drive-based storage tier for CoreWeave's AI object storage, supporting data tiering management. This collaboration further solidifies Backblaze's position as a key storage services provider in the AI era.