Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE) positions itself as a “reference architecture for the modern customer engagement stack,” emphasizing real-time, cross-channel messaging built on stream processing technology, Chief Financial Officer Isabelle Winkles said during a Needham conference discussion with analyst Scott Berg.
Winkles traced the company’s origins to the rise of mobile technology and the proliferation of digital messaging channels, arguing that brands increasingly need to collect and leverage high-quality first-party and zero-party data. She said Braze’s software development kit (SDK) sits inside customers’ native digital properties, enabling the company to process “trillions of data points and billions of messages.” Winkles also highlighted Braze’s Data Platform and Cloud Data Ingestion capabilities, which she said can sync “trillions of lines of data” into the platform at a low cost of ownership.
How management views agentic commerce and personalization
On “agentic commerce,” Winkles noted that Braze’s business is “about 80% not retail and e-commerce,” describing the company as diversified beyond those verticals. She said the key strategic question is whether new agent platforms become closed ecosystems or open ecosystems. In a closed scenario, she said brands may need more direct engagement through their own properties; in an open scenario, Braze would aim to enable data capture through those new platforms.
Winkles argued that Braze has been “ahead of the curve” on personalization and AI, saying the company has incorporated AI “from the beginning” and that value is created by combining AI with high-quality data and real-time interaction. She said recent customer strength reflects “relentless focus on execution,” while also pointing to what she described as competitors in “legacy cloud” dialing down investment.
ChatGPT SDK and embedded app opportunities
Berg and Winkles discussed Braze’s SDK for the ChatGPT platform. Winkles said the initiative is early and that Braze built the SDK in “about two weeks,” with some time spent obtaining access to the development environment. She described this as evidence of an R&D “flywheel” and said Braze is preparing for ChatGPT to potentially evolve into a broader platform for customer-brand engagement rather than simply another messaging channel.
When asked about early customer learnings, Winkles said it is still early and customers are “still figuring out exactly how they’re going to leverage the app or the new platform,” adding that Braze is prepared to support them as adoption develops.
Decision Studio (OfferFit) and new AI-driven capabilities
Berg also asked about OfferFit, which Braze acquired mid-2025 and later rebranded as Decision Studio. Winkles described Decision Studio as a “reinforcement learning engine” sold around optimization of specific business use cases. She said it shifts customers from building sophisticated journeys to “selling performance,” with measurable uplift tied to a business outcome.
Winkles cited Yum! Brands as an example discussed publicly by the company and added another example, saying Capital One uses the tool to convert business account holders to a credit card product, where small uplifts can have meaningful economic impact.
Beyond Decision Studio, Winkles discussed Agent Console, which she said is in private beta and expected to become generally available in Q2. She said customers are using natural language to build agents that can perform tasks such as building campaigns and optimizing in an “always-on” engagement model. She provided examples of early use cases described by management:
- A beauty provider app store sending immediate upsell or cross-sell messages after an appointment is booked, using contextual data.
- An e-commerce marketplace using “Connected Content” to identify buyer demand signals and share them with potential sellers.
- A spirituality app using multiple agents for content generation, such as writing copy for spiritual leaders and providing daily prayers.
Winkles said these are “evolutionary” extensions of long-running themes like real-time personalization, but executed more efficiently and with higher context through agents.
Pricing, credits, and margin considerations
Winkles said most customer spending still flows to Braze’s “core” platform. She noted that some capabilities, such as an “AI Operator,” are not charged separately, but said Agent Console is expected to be incorporated into Braze’s credits model when it reaches GA in Q2. She also said Decision Studio is sold separately and “sells for about $250,000-$300,000 per use case.”
Discussing “Flex Credits,” Winkles said the company aimed to reduce friction by moving away from customers pre-selecting channel-specific message volumes. Under the approach she described, entitlements are purchased upfront with a revenue recognition model that remains identical, but credits are fungible across channels. She said this enables faster experimentation and increased cross-channel adoption, which she characterized as improving stickiness.
However, Winkles said the model has margin implications. With less unused entitlement (“breakage”) and higher consumption of purchased credits—alongside adoption of “more premium channels” such as WhatsApp and SMS—costs can rise and mix into the gross margin profile. She said the company views upsells as one offset, particularly if customers consume closer to their entitlement.
For Agent Console, Winkles said the company is using the private beta to understand “number of invocations,” volumes, and costs across large language model (LLM) options, including “bring your own LLM.” She said credits would be consumed at the invocation of an LLM step, with a portion of a credit assigned to that step.
Go-to-market changes, retention trends, and competitive positioning
On go-to-market leadership, Winkles discussed the departure of President and longtime commercial leader Myles (who left in the summer) and the hiring of Chief Revenue Officer Ed McDonnell. She said McDonnell brings experience from outside Braze, including time at competitors, and is expected to help advance existing strategies such as verticalization, internationalization, expanding among heavy email users, and deepening partner ecosystem relationships.
Winkles acknowledged some disruption from leadership changes, including “a little bit of elevated departures among some of the sales folks,” and said the company is investing to increase capacity. She added that incremental sales capacity would be more fully online in the “second half of next year,” rather than Q1 or Q2.
On pricing and packaging changes beyond credits, Winkles said Braze eliminated data point caps tied to monthly active users (MAUs), aiming to reduce customer concern about hitting thresholds. She also described changes in how services are sold, shifting away from bundling and toward selling services more directly—an approach she said could increase professional services revenue as a percentage of total.
On demand and retention, Winkles said the company believes it is “through the belly of the beast” from the zero-interest-rate environment, citing attenuation of downsell over several quarters and stabilization of in-quarter dollar-based net retention. She noted the company has “a big available renewal dollar quarter in Q1” and said management is focused on execution around that renewal cycle.
Winkles also provided a framework for thinking about growth and net revenue retention, stating that Braze’s top line is “approximately half upsell and half net new” bookings over time, with the upsell component netting against downsell and modest churn.
In response to an audience question about competitive differentiation, Winkles described two ends of the competitive set: legacy marketing clouds that she said are often email-centric and built on batch processing, and subscale point solutions that may compete on price but lack a fully integrated, natively cross-channel architecture. She argued Braze’s moat includes its stream processing foundation, SDK embedded in native applications, and cross-channel design built from the outset, which she said makes it easier for Braze to add new channels and extend new features across those channels.
About Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE)
Braze, Inc is a publicly traded software company (NASDAQ: BRZE) that offers a customer engagement platform designed to help brands build personalized relationships with their users. Founded in 2011 as Appboy by Bill Magnuson, Jon Hyman and Mark Ghermezian, the company adopted the Braze name in 2017 to underscore its focus on fostering strong connections between businesses and consumers. Its cloud-based platform consolidates messaging channels including push notifications, in-app messages, email and SMS, enabling companies to deliver timely, context-driven communications at scale.
The core functionality of Braze’s platform centers on data-driven segmentation, customer journey orchestration and real-time analytics.
