Braze was sending more than 100 billion messages a month before it went public. Most were the small nudges people get from their apps: a push alert about a sale, a reminder to finish an order, an email about a new feature. The company began in 2011 as Appboy, built for a world that had just moved onto smartphones. By 2021 brands wanted to talk to customers across every channel at once, and Braze filed to go public.

Appboy Grows Up

Bill Magnuson, Jon Hyman, and Mark Ghermezian founded Appboy in New York and raised $3 million to start it. In 2016 they launched Canvas, a tool for building customer journeys that span many messages. A $50 million round followed in 2017, and the company renamed itself Braze. By 2019 it had passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. In 2020 it joined a boycott of Facebook advertising over content moderation.

From $65 to Salesforce

Braze priced its IPO at $65 a share and began trading on Nasdaq as BRZE on November 17, 2021. It raised $520 million at a market value of $5.9 billion. Braze added AI tools under the name Sage and opened offices in Seoul, Dubai, and Bucharest. On October 19, 2026, it agreed to be bought by Salesforce for $47.50 a share in cash.

Cover: Fishing by Torch in Kai Province (Koshu hiburi), from the series One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean, Katsushika Hokusai. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for fishing by torchlight (drawing customers in).