Backblaze Flamethrower Startup Program Launches to Help Founders Build Faster Without Infrastructure Surprises

Backblaze Inc., a high-performance cloud storage platform for the AI era, announced the launch of Backblaze Flamethrower, a new start-up program designed to help early-stage companies build, scale, and reach product-market fit without being slowed down by unpredictable infrastructure costs or complexity.Flamethrower is built specifically for founders and small teams working on data-heavy products such as AI and ML, media, gaming, and SaaS applications. Emphasizing real production infrastructure, practical support, and a founder-first approach, Flamethrower is unlike traditional start-up programs that rely on short-term credits, upcharges, and automated onboarding, instead providing simple, reliable cloud object storage from day one.

“Too often, start-ups move fast early on, only to discover later that their infrastructure decisions have quietly become expensive, sticky, and difficult to unwind,” said James Leaverton, director, startups & developer relations, Backblaze. “Flamethrower exists to meet teams before that moment, giving them storage that just works, predictable pricing they can work with in the long term, and direct access to people who’ve been through this before.”

Through the Flamethrower program, qualifying start-ups receive cloud storage credits for Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, along with access to Backblaze experts who understand start-up architectures and real-world production environments. The program supports common start-up workloads including AI/ML training data, media and gaming assets, fast-growing SaaS platforms, as well as backup, archiving, and disaster recovery.

Flamethrower is intentionally designed to respect founders’ time. There are no mandatory demos, no surprise sales motions, and no pressure to convert before teams are ready. Applications are reviewed by real people, and participants can engage with Backblaze on their own terms as they scale.

“Founders don’t fail because they chose the wrong storage provider-they fail because everything else is already hard enough,” said Leaverton. “Our goal is to make storage the least interesting and most enabling part of their stack.”

Flamethrower is available now, and eligible startups can learn more from the blog post and apply for the program here.