Backblaze Publishes Q2 2026 Network Stats: New Variance Analysis Reveals Just How Unpredictable AI Traffic Really Is

Across Backblaze's network, neocloud and hyperscaler traffic shows high volatility while CDN and hosting traffic maintains predictable patterns

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Backblaze, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLZE), the storage platform powering AI infrastructure, today published its Q2 2026 Network Stats report. The third installment in its quarterly series, this report highlights a new variance-based view that measures not just how much data moves across Backblaze's network, but how predictably it moves.

Using a new time-series dataset built from 10-minute traffic samples, Backblaze modeled ingress and egress behavior against statistical baselines to separate stable, predictable traffic from the highly volatile workloads that increasingly define AI infrastructure. The analysis shows that neocloud and hyperscaler traffic behave nothing like the traditional CDN, hosting, and ISP traffic that has moved across the internet for decades.

“As we support increasingly more AI workloads, we've needed to not only store but also move data at scale,” said Gleb Budman, CEO, Backblaze. “The past several quarters, we’ve seen that neocloud workflows are fundamentally different compared to traditional internet traffic and we're digging in deeper on that variance to optimize how we serve our customers.”

Key findings from the Q2 2026 Network Stats report include:

• AI traffic is fundamentally more volatile than traditional internet traffic—but not all in the same way. Hyperscaler traffic showed the sharpest volatility, with egress swinging between 50 and 150 Gbps against a stable, tightly controlled ingress baseline. This pattern is consistent with bursty, on-demand customer data retrieval. Neocloud traffic showed a more moderate, synchronized volatility, with ingress and egress scaling together in sustained, business-hour patterns. Even traditionally "steady" traffic types weren't uniformly predictable: CDN ingress stayed nearly flat, but CDN egress swung across a wide range, peaking near 600 Gbps. This underscores the need for infrastructure tailored to specific AI workloads.
• CDN traffic holds onto a new, higher baseline. CDN traffic is up 66% year-over-year, a sustained increase rather than a temporary spike. This shows more CDN providers are using Backblaze as an origin store.
• AI workloads continue to spread geographically. Neocloud traffic magnitude (the amount of data moved per unique IP address) ticked up in the EU-Central region this quarter, alongside growing hosting traffic concentration in EU-Central. This may reflect a broader industry trend toward geographic dispersion of AI workloads, Backblaze’s own growing footprint in the space, or some combination of both.

“What defines AI traffic isn't volume. It's timing. Traditional internet traffic stays smooth because it's millions of requests happening at different times. A GPU cluster is the opposite: tens of thousands of machines moving data at the same instant, so the peaks never average out,” said Dan Spraggins, CTO, Backblaze. “That's why we run these workloads over private network interconnects. We can engineer each one on its own terms, and one customer's burst never lands on another's traffic.”

Availability

The full report, including detailed variance charts, traffic-type breakdowns, and geographic heatmaps, is available on the Backblaze blog: Network Stats for Q2 2026: All Eyes on Neocloud Traffic Variance.

Backblaze will also host a live webinar on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. PT / 2:30 p.m. ET, featuring Brent Nowak, Manager, Network Engineering, and Stephanie Doyle, Sr. Manager, Market Intelligence, to walk through the findings. Register here.

The full Network Stats series can be found at: www.backblaze.com/blog/tag/networkstats

About Backblaze

Backblaze (NASDAQ: BLZE) is the object storage layer powering AI infrastructure and data-intensive workloads at scale. Built over two decades, the company has leveraged hardware, software, and operational innovation into a platform that delivers the performance and economics the AI era demands — without lock-in. Today, more than 500,000 customers trust Backblaze to move and store the data powering their businesses, reaching hundreds of millions of end users across 175 countries. For more information, visit www.backblaze.com.