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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
Introducing the State of AI Coding 2026

New Relic's 2026 State of AI Coding Report surveys 200 U.S. tech leaders on generative and agentic AI tools moving from personal sandboxes to production pipelines.

blog_post
Best Datadog Alternatives for Modern Observability in 2026

Discover the best Datadog alternatives to improve observability, reduce costs, and unify telemetry for your engineering team’s reliability and efficiency.

blog_post
Logs vs Metrics: What’s the Difference in Observability?

Understand when to use logs vs metrics for effective monitoring and debugging. Learn how a unified approach improves incident response and system insights.

blog_post
Open Source Observability: Tools, Setup, and Trade-offs

Learn how to build effective open source observability that improves system reliability and reduces complexity with proven tools and strategies.

blog_post
Building the Future of Telemetry in the Open

New Relic Experimental is our open-source incubator designed to bridge the gap between emerging tech and enterprise observability.

blog_post
From Cool Demo to Production-Ready: How We Made an AI Travel Agent Trustworthy with New Relic

A walkthrough of taking an AI Travel Agent (WanderAI) from a demo to production, covering OpenTelemetry tracing, AI monitoring, SLOs, and prompt injection defense.

blog_post
Enhancing Security and Transparency: Introducing the New Relic Private Trust Center

Enhance vendor management with the New Relic Private Trust Center. Paid customers get instant access to confidential SOC reports, ISO certifications, and security policies.

blog_post
Supercharge SAP on AWS: Intelligent Observability for the hybrid enterprise

Supercharge SAP on AWS transformation with New Relic's intelligent observability. Get full-stack visibility across hybrid and RISE with SAP environments.

blog_post
New Relic and Microsoft: Intelligent Observability for the Agentic Era

See how New Relic and Microsoft are embedding Intelligent Observability into Azure workflows and what we’ve built for teams deploying AI in production.

blog_post
Kubernetes Monitoring Tools: Essential Features & How to Choose the Right One

Discover the best Kubernetes monitoring tools to gain clear, actionable insights and reduce noise during critical incidents. Find the right fit for your team.

blog_post
Can a High-Performance Culture Also Prioritize Wellbeing?

Discover how New Relic balances a high-performance culture with mental health and wellbeing through community, compassion, and continuous support.

blog_post
Advanced Service Level Management is now GA

New Relic Advanced SLM is now GA. Use Maintenance Windows to protect Error Budgets & Facet Compliance for deep, multi-dimensional reliability analysis.

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.

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