SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 24, 2026--
Backblaze, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLZE), the high-performance cloud storage platform for the AI era, today announced the appointment of Rhett Dillingham as Senior Vice President of Product, strengthening the company's executive leadership team as its cloud storage platform and AI use cases continue to scale.
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Dillingham brings more than two decades of product management and design leadership experience building high growth, globally developed and delivered cloud platforms. In his role, he oversees Backblaze’s product organization driving customer-centric product innovation to support the growing demands of AI and data-intensive workloads.
"Rhett's experience leading product teams across AI, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity make him an excellent leader for our product organization," said Gleb Budman, co-founder and CEO of Backblaze. "As customers rely on Backblaze to power AI-driven and mission-critical workloads, his background building global platforms will help us innovate faster and strengthen our storage cloud for the next generation of applications."
Prior to joining Backblaze, Dillingham served as Senior Vice President of Product at HackerOne, where he led the company’s product management and design functions in AI-powered platform development for continuous threat exposure reduction. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Product at Sumo Logic and Rackspace after holding product leadership roles at AWS, Microsoft, and AMD.
“Backblaze’s differentiated combination of cloud storage performance with cost predictability empowers application builders to focus on innovation instead of cost to ship bolder application capabilities faster,” said Dillingham. “This is especially applicable in the burgeoning AI-powered application development space, and I am thrilled to join the team in advancing Backblaze’s platform capabilities addressing these growing customer object storage needs.”
Dillingham comes to Backblaze having built and led product teams responsible for some of the industry’s highest scale global cloud and cybersecurity platforms. In this new role, he will guide the customer-centric build-out of the company’s storage cloud as it supports the next generation of AI-powered and data-driven applications.
About Backblaze
Backblaze (NASDAQ: BLZE) gives businesses the freedom to innovate without limits by removing the barriers of lock-in, complexity, and cost. Our high-performance cloud object storage accelerates AI workflows, powers data-heavy applications, streamlines media management, and protects critical data. As an award-winning independent cloud, we provide unparalleled levels of interoperability that enable over 500,000 of our customers to reach and serve hundreds of millions of end users in 175 countries around the world. For more information, please go to www.backblaze.com.
Rhett Dillingham, Senior Vice President of Product at Backblaze
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market rebounded after getting a reminder that the artificial-intelligence technology boom may also have an upside. The S&P 500 climbed 0.8% Tuesday and recovered nearly three-quarters of its loss from the day before, when worries worsened that AI could ultimately make some businesses and industries obsolete. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also rose 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 1%. AMD helped lead the market after announcing a multiyear deal where it will supply chips to power Meta Platforms’ AI ambitions. IBM recovered some of its drop from the prior day, when worries about AI sent it to its worst loss since 2000.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is rebounding on Tuesday after getting a reminder that the artificial-intelligence technology boom may also have an upside.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.8%, a day after dropping 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 424 points, or 0.9%, as of 2:53 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.1% higher.
Advanced Micro Devices helped lead the market and rallied 8.9% after announcing a multiyear deal where it will supply chips to help power Meta Platforms’ AI ambitions. Under the agreement, Meta also got the right to buy up to 160 million shares of AMD stock for 1 cent each, depending in part on how many chips Meta ultimately buys.
It’s a reminder of the excitement that built in recent years about the billions of dollars pouring into AI, which could remake the world and create a more productive economy.
It also helped produce a sharp turnaround from the prior day, when worries about the potential downsides of AI shook Wall Street, particularly companies and industries that investors fear could be made obsolete. Industries as far flung as software, trucking logistics and financial services have recently seen investors suddenly and aggressively punish them for potentially being under threat.
IBM rose 2.9% Tuesday to recover a chunk of its 13.1% drop from the prior day, which was its worst since 2000.
The pain has also filtered out to the private-equity industry, with fears building that loans it made to software companies dependent on recurring revenue may have less of a chance of getting repaid. Blue Owl Capital rose 3.8% and trimmed its loss for the young year so far to less than 30%.
On Tuesday, Anthropic unveiled new tools for businesses to use with its Claude AI assistant. They covered everything from human-resources work to engineering to investment banking.
The event suggested that fears about AI supplanting existing software, rather than merely making it easier to use, may be overblown, according to Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush. “While these use cases are impressive, the reality is that these new AI tools will not rip and replace existing software ecosystems and data environments with these AI tools only as useful as the data it can reach.”
One of the tools announced Tuesday allows users to bring data on financial markets from FactSet into Claude. FactSet Research Systems' stock jumped 6.4% for one of the biggest gains in the S&P 500, though it's still down roughly 30% for the year so far.
Other companies hit hard by worries about AI competition also trimmed their losses for the year. Salesforce climbed 4.2%, and AppLovin rose 3.5%.
Outside of AI worries, big U.S. companies continue to report mostly better profits for the end of 2025 than analysts expected.
Keysight Technologies rallied 21.3% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after topping analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue in the latest quarter. It also said revenue in the current quarter could rise by roughly 30% from a year earlier.
Home Depot rose 2.1% after likewise delivering stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected. That was even with what CEO Ted Decker called “ongoing consumer uncertainty.”
Meanwhile, Coinbase Global bounced back from an early drop to add 0.1%. The crypto trading platform fell earlier as bitcoin dropped back toward $64,000, close to half its record price reached in October.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements in Europe.
The swings were larger in Asia. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.1%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.8%. Stocks in Shanghai rose 0.9% after reopening following a holiday of more than a week.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady after a report said that confidence among U.S. consumers improved by more than economists expected. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.04% from 4.03%, where it was late Monday.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
A pedestrian walks outside the New York Stock Exchange during a snow storm, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Snow falls outside the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Snow falls outside the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader stretches near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
