Cloud Storage Platform Box.net Raises $81M From Salesforce, SAP At $600M-Plus Valuation
Cloud storage platform Box.net has raised $81 million in Series D funding from strategic investors Salesforce.com and SAP Ventures with Bessemer Venture Partners, NEA, and prior investors including Andreessen Horowitz …
Context & Ripple Effects
Forbes frames the round around the decision that preceded it: Box.net reportedly rebuffed a $600 million takeover approach from Citrix, then closed $81 million at a valuation above that number. The cap table tells the story — Salesforce.com and SAP Ventures come in as strategics alongside Bessemer Venture Partners, NEA, and returning investor Andreessen Horowitz.
The investor mix fits each firm's stated direction. Andreessen Horowitz has been explicit since early 2011 about moving beyond super angel investing into late-stage growth capital, and Salesforce has spent the year pushing Chatter deeper into the enterprise. Backing the storage layer that sits underneath enterprise collaboration is a distribution play for both strategics, not a passive check.
First-order effects
- Box converts a rejected $600 million exit into an independent growth path, with Salesforce and SAP Ventures now holding strategic stakes in a company positioned directly inside their customer bases.
- The $600M-plus valuation sets a public benchmark for the cloud storage category, giving Dropbox and other rivals a comparable mark for their own fundraising conversations.
Second-order effects
- Salesforce and SAP gain incentive to bundle Box with their own suites — Salesforce through its Chatter-led enterprise social push, SAP through its broader cloud portfolio — turning storage into a bundled feature of larger platform deals and forcing Dropbox to chase equivalent enterprise partnerships.
- Andreessen Horowitz's continued recycling of late-stage capital into pre-IPO cloud companies keeps growth-round prices elevated, raising the cost for any acquirer hoping to buy category players cheaply.
Third-order effects
- If strategic corporate investors keep stepping in at valuations that match takeover offers, consolidation in enterprise software shifts from outright acquisitions toward minority stakes and distribution alliances — vendors renting influence over the stack rather than owning it.
- Content storage and collaboration hardens into a contested layer between the major SaaS platforms, with each large vendor likely to back its own storage partner rather than build the capability in-house.
The trend: Cloud storage is becoming a strategic battleground where SaaS giants deploy late-stage capital to align independent platforms with their distribution channels instead of acquiring them outright.