Customer.io poised for premium valuations

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Customer.io passes $70M ARR

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Braze’s ARR multiple has declined to 6.8x now, as growth has decelerated to 26% YoY
Analyzed 9 sources

Braze’s lower multiple shows that the market now treats customer engagement software as a durability and margin story, not just a growth story. Braze is still large and growing, but its revenue growth slowed from 33% in fiscal 2024 to about 25% in fiscal 2026, while dollar based net retention fell from 117% to 111%. That combination matters because Braze sells bigger enterprise programs with heavier sales and support needs, so slower expansion makes its negative margins harder to justify than Klaviyo’s leaner ecommerce model.

  • Braze’s public comps have compressed alongside fundamentals. Fiscal 2024 revenue grew 33%, Q2 fiscal 2025 grew 26.4%, and Q3 fiscal 2026 grew 25.5%. At the same time, NDR moved from 117% at January 2024, to 114% at July 2024, to 111% at January 2025, showing less expansion from the installed base.
  • Klaviyo looks better on both shape and efficiency. Klaviyo reached about $937M ARR in 2024 and roughly 34% ARR growth, with an estimated $10.7B valuation. Its self serve, Shopify centered motion lets more revenue drop through with less enterprise selling friction than Braze’s bigger deal motion.
  • This is the opening for Customer.io. Customer.io and Braze sat at similar retention levels, but Customer.io built around technical, product led teams and historically used developer integration and flexible segmentation to create switching costs without needing the same enterprise sales intensity. That makes 35% growth at sub $100M ARR look cleaner than Braze’s slower, heavier model.

Going forward, multiples in this category should keep separating by go to market model. Companies that can hold 110% plus retention while serving customers through product led onboarding or ecommerce native workflows should win premium valuations. Companies that rely more on large enterprise expansions will need clearer margin leverage to re rate upward.