New Relic logo

New Relic

Challenger#14 in Developer Tools

Observability platform taken private by Francisco Partners for $6.5B; unified APM, logs, and traces with generous free tier and New Relic AI natural language querying for engineering teams.

Best for: Observability/APM
45
AI Score
Grade C↑ Trending
AI Visibility Score (Beta)
Developer ToolsObservability/APMWebsiteUpdated March 2026

Brand Intelligence Graph

Competes with
Integrates with
Capabilities
Observability/APM

Company Overview

About New Relic

New Relic is an observability platform providing application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, distributed tracing, log management, and synthetic monitoring for engineering teams building and operating software. Founded in 2008 in San Francisco by Lew Cirne (who previously founded Wily Technology, acquired by CA Technologies) and listed on NYSE, New Relic was acquired by Francisco Partners and TPG in November 2023 for approximately $6.5 billion, taking the company private after years as a public company.

Business Model & Competitive Advantage

New Relic's platform (New Relic One) was rebuilt from its original per-product pricing model into a unified consumption-based platform where customers ingest all telemetry data (metrics, events, logs, traces) into one platform and pay per data volume ingested. This "all-in-one" repositioning sought to compete more directly with Datadog's unified observability platform, though the transition required significant customer re-education and temporarily impacted revenue predictability.

Competitive Landscape 2025–2026

In 2025, New Relic under private equity ownership is executing a refocused strategy emphasizing its free tier (100GB/month forever free), which has driven developer adoption, and its AI-powered anomaly detection and alert correlation. The company introduced New Relic AI (Grok) — an AI assistant for querying observability data in natural language. New Relic competes with Datadog (the market leader), Dynatrace, Grafana, and newer players like Middleware and Last9. The private equity ownership allows restructuring for profitability without public market scrutiny. The 2025 strategy focuses on developer-led growth through the free tier, enterprise expansion, and AI-powered observability features that reduce the complexity of managing modern distributed systems.

Founded
2008
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Curated content • Fact-checked and verified

The New Relic Story

San Francisco, California
Founded by Lew Cirne (2008 Wily application performance monitoring full-stack observability)

The Breakthrough Moment

Lew Cirne created New Relic in San Francisco in 2008 from Wily Technology as application performance monitoring platform for full-stack observability with APM, infrastructure, browser, mobile, synthetic monitoring, and distributed tracing before IPO 2014 then private in 2024 as SaaS pioneer with Ruby agent

Original Mission

"Democratize data make every engineer data-driven"

Founders

Lew Cirne (2008 Wily application performance monitoring full-stack observability)

Recent Activity

View all →
blog_post
Cleared for Launch: Ahead of the framework by design – Part 1

New Relic uses STAR to accelerate releases for all products, including AI. See how this unified framework streamlines security, legal, and compliance.

blog_post
Empowering Relics to Own Their Career Growth

Learn how New Relic’s 5th Grow Your Career Month equips employees with continuous learning, leadership development, and AI skills to drive career growth.

blog_post
How to Choose Digital Experience Monitoring Tools

Discover how digital experience monitoring tools help you understand user issues beyond APM, enabling faster, clearer insights for better software performance.

blog_post
Session Replay Tools: A Technical Buyer’s Guide and Comparison

Discover how to evaluate session replay tools for engineering teams, ensuring they meet technical needs for incident response and observability.

blog_post
New Relic SecurityRX - Security for Operational Reliability

Treat security as a reliability problem. New UI experience (with the homepage), automation capabilities (with Jira), and the agent public preview for a complete remediation workflow.

blog_post
AWS Cloud Cost Management Tools: Comprehensive Buyer’s Guide (2026)

Discover the best AWS cloud cost management tools to gain visibility, reduce waste, and connect spend data with system performance for smarter decisions.

blog_post
Google Cloud Platform Observability enhancements now GA

Monitor Google Cloud securely with Workload Identity Federation, dimensional metrics, Terraform deployment, and full-stack context in New Relic.

10-Q
10-Q — 10-Q

Quarterly Report filed 2026-08-04

blog_post
Azure Cost Management Tools: Comparison and Buyer’s Guide (2026)

Discover the best Azure cost management tools to gain real-time visibility, control spend, and optimize your Azure environment with confidence.

blog_post
Introducing New Relic eBPF Logs - Now in Public Preview

Collect application logs through the New Relic eBPF agent, connect them to APM services, and reduce the need for a separate log forwarder.

blog_post
Salesforce Observability with New Relic

The New Relic Salesforce Exporter centralizes Salesforce telemetry, performance, and security data into New Relic for proactive, unified observability.

blog_post
MCP is going stateless: What the new spec means for AI agents

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is going stateless. Discover how this architecture shift simplifies agent scaling and integrates OpenTelemetry.

Company Timeline

Major milestones in New Relic's journey

4
Total Events
1
Product Launches

Leadership Team

Meet the leaders behind New Relic

James Patel

Chief Financial Officer

James Patel serves as Chief Financial Officer at New Relic, bringing extensive industry experience and leadership.

Jennifer Davis

Chief Executive Officer

Jennifer Davis serves as Chief Executive Officer at New Relic, bringing extensive industry experience and leadership.

Richard Moore

Chief Operating Officer

Richard Moore serves as Chief Operating Officer at New Relic, bringing extensive industry experience and leadership.

Richard Smith

Chief Marketing Officer

Richard Smith serves as Chief Marketing Officer at New Relic, bringing extensive industry experience and leadership.

Linda Davis

Chief Product Officer

Linda Davis serves as Chief Product Officer at New Relic, bringing extensive industry experience and leadership.

Key Differentiators

Strong Challenger

New Relic is an established challenger with significant market presence and competitive offerings in DevOps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Estimated Visibility Trend (Beta)

Simulated 8-week rolling score

45
↑ Trending

Based on estimated brand signals. Historical tracking coming soon.

Compare New Relic with Competitors

Side-by-side AI visibility scores, platform breakdown, and market position.

For New Relic

Claim This Profile

Are you from New Relic? Claim your profile to see full AI mention excerpts, get weekly visibility change alerts, and optimize how AI systems describe your brand.

Claim New Relic Profile →
For competitors & analysts

Track AI Visibility in Real Time

Monitor how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude mention New Relic vs competitors. Get alerts when AI recommendations shift.

Start Free Tracking →