New Relic Company Profile (2026)
Company Profile | Observability & APM | Updated August 2026
New Relic: AI-Powered Observability Platform with Full-Stack Monitoring and Agentic AI
New Relic is an AI-powered observability platform providing full-stack monitoring, APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, and AI agent observability. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, New Relic went public in 2014 (NYSE: NEWR). The company serves thousands of enterprises globally with its Intelligent Observability Platform, featuring Agentic AI Monitoring, AI Observability, New Relic Control, and OpenTelemetry integration.
Executive Summary
New Relic is an AI-powered observability platform serving thousands of enterprises globally. The company is publicly traded on NYSE (NEWR) and headquartered in San Francisco, California.
New Relic's approach is based on unified observability correlating telemetry across entire stacks with AI-powered insights. The platform is designed for DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, and development teams to monitor and optimize software performance, infrastructure, and AI systems.
In February 2026, New Relic unveiled major platform innovations including the Agentic Platform for AI agent monitoring, AI Observability for AI applications, New Relic Control for centralized observability management, and enhanced OpenTelemetry integration. The company continues to evolve from traditional APM to AI-strengthened intelligent observability.
New Relic serves thousands of enterprises globally, including many Fortune 500 companies. The company's platform unifies APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, distributed tracing, digital experience monitoring, and security into a single observability solution.
Company Overview
New Relic was founded in 2008 by Lew Cirne and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company went public in 2014 via an IPO on NYSE (NEWR).
New Relic develops an AI-powered observability platform with full-stack monitoring capabilities. The company's products include APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, distributed tracing, digital experience monitoring, synthetic monitoring, mobile monitoring, browser monitoring, security monitoring, and AI observability.
The company serves thousands of enterprises globally, with a usage-based pricing model starting at $19/month per host with a freemium tier offering 100 GB/month of free data ingestion.
Company History
New Relic was founded in 2008 by Lew Cirne in San Francisco, California. The company started as an application performance monitoring (APM) provider focused on helping developers understand application performance.
New Relic went public in 2014 via an IPO on NYSE (NEWR). The company raised substantial funding and grew through product expansion and acquisitions, including Pixie (eBPF-based observability).
In February 2026, New Relic announced major platform innovations at Advance 2026, including the Agentic Platform, AI Observability, New Relic Control, and enhanced OpenTelemetry capabilities. The company continues to evolve from traditional APM to AI-strengthened intelligent observability.
Leadership
- Bill Staples – Chief Executive Officer – Leads New Relic's business strategy, product vision, and growth.
- Chris Auld – Chief Financial Officer – Manages financial strategy, investor relations, and operations.
- Product and Engineering Teams – Develop observability platform, AI monitoring, Agentic Platform, and OpenTelemetry integration.
- Sales and Customer Success – Manage enterprise relationships and customer adoption.
Bill Staples serves as CEO and has led New Relic's transformation to AI-powered observability and intelligent monitoring.
Products & Services
Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
New Relic APM provides code-level insights, distributed tracing, error tracking, and performance monitoring for applications. It is designed for developers and SREs to identify and fix performance issues quickly.
APM includes serverless monitoring integrated with enhanced tracing, AI-driven insights, and a new Rust-based extension for improved performance. APM agents now support OpenTelemetry capabilities.
Infrastructure Monitoring
New Relic Infrastructure Monitoring provides cloud and on-premises infrastructure monitoring with automatic discovery, metrics collection, and eBPF-based network metrics for kernel-level visibility.
Infrastructure monitoring covers servers, containers, Kubernetes, cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP), and network layers with zero instrumentation.
Logs and Log Management
New Relic Logs provides log management, aggregation, and analysis integrated with APM and infrastructure monitoring. It enables teams to correlate logs with metrics and traces for faster root cause analysis.
Logs are accessible through NRQL (New Relic Query Language) with AI-powered insights and anomaly detection.
Agentic Platform and AI Observability
New Relic Agentic Platform is a no-code platform for creating and managing AI agents that monitor data to catch bugs and issues before they disrupt products. It supports Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting AI applications to external data sources.
AI Observability provides real-time cost management, deep reasoning visibility, quality guardrails, and autonomous incident resolution for AI systems and AI agents. Agentic AI Monitoring offers automatic visibility into multi-agent collaborations.
New Relic Control
New Relic Control provides centralized control plane for managing observability pipelines and heterogeneous agents at scale. It helps teams centrally manage agents, enforce observability standards, and optimize telemetry costs.
New Relic Preflight
New Relic Preflight (formerly AI Code Observability) is an open-source solution that extends production-grade monitoring directly into IDEs, transforming fragmented AI usage into auditable enterprise advantage.
Digital Experience, Synthetic, Mobile, Browser Monitoring
New Relic provides digital experience monitoring (DXM), synthetic monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and browser monitoring for comprehensive end-user experience visibility.
Security Monitoring
New Relic Security Monitoring provides vulnerability detection, security analytics, and Security RX for identifying and responding to security threats in applications and infrastructure.
Observability & AI Strategy
New Relic's strategy is to be the leading AI-strengthened intelligent observability platform. The company believes observability will transform through AI agents, automated insights, and unified telemetry correlating system performance with business outcomes.
- AI-powered observability platform correlating telemetry across entire stacks.
- Agentic Platform for AI agent monitoring and management.
- AI Observability for AI applications and multi-agent systems.
- New Relic Control for centralized observability management at scale.
- OpenTelemetry integration with APM agents.
- New Relic Preflight for AI code observability in IDEs.
- Full-stack monitoring (APM, infrastructure, logs, traces, DXM, security).
- Usage-based pricing with freemium tier (100 GB/month free).
New Relic's approach is to embed AI throughout its observability platform, helping teams isolate root causes, reduce MTTR, and correlate system performance with business impact.
Business Model
New Relic operates as a public SaaS company selling AI-powered observability platforms. Its model includes usage-based pricing with a freemium tier, paid plans starting at $19/month per host, and enterprise contracts.
The company offers 100 GB/month of free data ingestion with access to 30+ platform capabilities including APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, custom dashboards, errors inbox, tracing, and more. Paid plans scale based on usage, feature adoption, and deployment complexity.
New Relic is focused on AI adoption, enterprise expansion, and platform consolidation to improve revenue growth and customer retention.
Financial and Corporate Profile
| Metric | Figure or description |
|---|---|
| Legal name | New Relic, Inc. |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Lew Cirne |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Ownership | Public (NYSE: NEWR) |
| CEO | Bill Staples |
| Stock Symbol | NYSE: NEWR |
| Pricing Model | Usage-based with freemium tier (100 GB/month free) |
| Paid Plans | Starting at $19/month per host |
| Customers | Thousands of enterprises globally |
| Platform Capabilities | 30+ including APM, infrastructure, logs, tracing, DXM, security |
New Relic's financial performance is driven by usage-based subscription revenue, enterprise adoption, and AI-powered observability features. The company continues to invest in platform innovation and AI capabilities.
Competitive Landscape
New Relic competes with other observability, APM, monitoring, and AI observability companies.
| Competitor group | Examples | Competitive overlap |
|---|---|---|
| Full-stack observability | Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk | APM, infrastructure, logs, traces, and monitoring |
| Open source observability | Grafana Labs, Elastic, Prometheus | Metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards |
| Developer-focused | Honeycomb, Lightstep, Sentry | High-cardinality telemetry and error tracking |
| AI observability | Arize, WhyLabs, Fiddler | AI/ML model monitoring and observability |
New Relic's main differentiators are its AI-powered observability, Agentic Platform, full-stack monitoring, OpenTelemetry integration, and usage-based pricing with freemium tier. Its challenge is competing with Datadog, Dynatrace, and Grafana in the crowded observability market.
Competitive Advantages
- AI-powered observability – AI-strengthened platform with intelligent insights.
- Agentic Platform – No-code AI agent monitoring and management.
- AI Observability – Real-time AI system monitoring and cost management.
- Full-stack monitoring – APM, infrastructure, logs, traces, DXM, security in one platform.
- OpenTelemetry integration – APM agents with OTel capabilities.
- Usage-based pricing – Freemium tier with 100 GB/month free.
- New Relic Control – Centralized observability management at scale.
Risks and Challenges
- Competition – Intense competition from Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk, Grafana, and others.
- AI execution – Scaling Agentic Platform and AI Observability adoption.
- Enterprise sales – Competing with established observability leaders.
- Technology risk – Keeping pace with observability, AI, and OpenTelemetry trends.
- Customer retention – Maintaining high customer satisfaction and reducing churn in usage-based model.
- Market consolidation – Observability market consolidation and pricing pressure.
Future Outlook
New Relic is positioned to benefit from growing demand for AI-powered observability and AI agent monitoring. The platform's Agentic Platform, AI Observability, and full-stack monitoring are intended to support scaling.
The key question is whether New Relic can compete with Datadog, Dynatrace, and Grafana while differentiating through AI-strengthened observability. Success could strengthen its position as an observability leader.
New Relic's long-term opportunity is to become the leading AI-strengthened intelligent observability platform, enabling teams to correlate system performance with business outcomes and safely scale AI systems.
Key Takeaways
- New Relic is a public AI-powered observability platform provider.
- The company was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
- New Relic went public in 2014 via an IPO on NYSE (NEWR).
- Key products include APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, Agentic Platform, AI Observability, New Relic Control, and Preflight.
- New Relic serves thousands of enterprises globally with usage-based pricing (100 GB/month free).
- In February 2026, New Relic announced major innovations including Agentic Platform, AI Observability, and enhanced OpenTelemetry.
- New Relic competes with Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk, Grafana, Elastic, Honeycomb, and others.
- Its advantages include AI-powered observability, Agentic Platform, full-stack monitoring, OTel integration, and freemium pricing.
- Its risks include competition, AI execution, enterprise sales, technology, retention, and market consolidation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does New Relic do?
New Relic provides an AI-powered observability platform with full-stack monitoring including APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, distributed tracing, digital experience monitoring, and AI observability.
Is New Relic public?
Yes. New Relic is publicly traded on NYSE (NEWR) since 2014.
How much does New Relic cost?
New Relic uses usage-based pricing with a freemium tier offering 100 GB/month free. Paid plans start at $19/month per host and scale based on usage and features.
Who founded New Relic?
New Relic was founded in 2008 by Lew Cirne in San Francisco, California.
Who competes with New Relic?
New Relic competes with Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk, Grafana Labs, Elastic, Honeycomb, Sentry, and other observability and monitoring platforms.
- New Relic platform innovations and AI observability. New Relic Press Release.
- New Relic Agentic Platform and OpenTelemetry tools. TechCrunch.
- New Relic AI-powered observability platform. New Relic.
- New Relic Control for observability at scale. New Relic Blog.
- New Relic AI agent observability expansion. TechTarget.
- New Relic full-stack observability review. Modern Data Tools.
Profile compiled August 2026. Financial figures, product timelines, and technology roadmaps may change. This article is intended for editorial and informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice.