28-Year-Old Data Storage Company Founder Alex Bouzari Becomes Billionaire Amid AI Boom

Aug 6, 2026

Alex Bouzari, the 65-year-old cofounder and CEO of data storage company DDN, has joined the billionaire ranks with a $2 billion net worth. Driven by the artificial intelligence boom, DDN's revenue is on track to double to $1 billion in 2026. A January 2025 investment by Blackstone valued the 28-year-old bootstrapped company at $5 billion. Bouzari is also planning a massive $60 billion, 1.3-gigawatt data center in Wheeler, Texas, to meet surging AI infrastructure demands.

DDN billionaire founder profile

▪Alex Bouzari, the 65-year-old French-Iranian cofounder and CEO of data storage company DDN, became a billionaire with a net worth of approximately $2 billion.
▪Paul Bloch, the 65-year-old cofounder of DDN, holds an equal 40% stake in the company worth approximately $2 billion as of August 2026.
▪Alex Bouzari splits his time between Paris, France, and Las Vegas, Nevada, and is known for designing his own maximalist clothing and home interiors.

AI data storage demand surge

▪Storage memory card maker SanDisk saw its stock rise 3,100% over a 12-month period, reaching a market capitalization of $210 billion by August 2026.
▪Micron's revenue quadrupled year-over-year to $41.5 billion in the second quarter of 2026, with its shares rising over 615% over a 12-month period.
▪New York-based competitor Vast Data was valued at $30 billion following a $1 billion fundraising round in April 2026.

DDN technology for supercomputers

▪DDN uses software to break up large files and distribute them across thousands of hard drives to prevent data congestion in high-speed supercomputers.
▪DDN's software helps prevent expensive Nvidia servers, which cost around $500,000, from sitting idle by accelerating data flow to and from GPUs.
▪DDN transitioned to selling standalone software in 2023, yielding gross margins of over 90% compared to 60% for its hardware racks.

Blackstone investment valuation

▪In January 2025, Blackstone acquired a $300 million stake in DDN, valuing the Chatsworth, California-based data storage company at $5 billion.
▪The Blackstone investment provides DDN with access to Blackstone's clients and its $325 billion data center portfolio.

DDN bootstrapped company history

▪DDN grew its revenue to $100 million by 2008 and $220 million by 2018 without raising any outside capital during that ten-year period.
▪DDN's revenue grew from $400 million in 2024 to $500 million in 2025, and is projected to reach $1 billion in 2026.
▪Alex Bouzari and Paul Bloch founded DDN in Chatsworth, California in 1998, after previously building Mega Drive Systems into a $30 million-a-year business.
▪After raising $10 million in venture funding in 2001, DDN's founders bought out their investors in 2002 to return to a bootstrapped, profitable model.

Texas data center project

▪Since March 2026, Alex Bouzari has been planning a new 1.3-gigawatt data center in Wheeler, Texas, with projected construction costs exceeding $60 billion.
▪The planned Wheeler, Texas data center project would consume as much electrical power as approximately 1 million homes.