Dropbox-Rival Box Is Raising $100M In New Funding At A $2B Valuation
Posted 13 seconds ago by Alex Wilhelm (@alex), Leena Rao (@leenarao) — TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie On Turning The One-For-One Charity Model Into A Platform — Enterprise cloud file storage firm Box is raising …
Context & Ripple Effects
This round caps a steady climb for Box: the company raised an $81M round from Salesforce and SAP at a $600M-plus valuation in October 2011, and a follow-on financing was reported back in July 2012. A $2B mark means the valuation has more than tripled in two years.
The timing matters because of the rival across the table: reports two days earlier had Dropbox itself out raising, unconfirmed at a reported $250M on an $8B valuation. The two consumer-cloud file companies are now raising large late-stage rounds within the same week, each arming up against the other. Pickup was limited to Business Insider syndication.
First-order effects
- Box gains roughly $100M of fresh capital at a $2B valuation, giving it runway to push further into enterprise accounts where Salesforce and SAP — its earlier strategic backers — already give it distribution.
- The rumored Dropbox raise at a claimed $8B valuation sets the valuation benchmark Box is being measured against, sharpening pressure on Box to justify its own number with enterprise traction.
Second-order effects
- Competitive spending escalates on both sides: with Dropbox reportedly acquiring product teams like Mailbox and Snapjoy through 2013 while Box banks cash, both firms can fund feature builds and sales hiring that smaller sync-and-share rivals cannot match.
- Enterprise buyers gain leverage — with two heavily capitalized vendors bidding for corporate deployments, per-seat pricing and bundled integrations become the battleground rather than raw storage cost.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, cloud file storage splits into a two-tier market — a pair of well-funded generalists scaling toward public listings, and everyone else competing on vertical or price niches they leave behind.
- Large private rounds at billion-dollar marks ahead of any filing signal that late-stage investors, not public markets, are underwriting the sector's consolidation phase.
The trend: Consumer-cloud storage is consolidating into a funded duel between Dropbox and Box, each taking oversized private rounds to buy enterprise credibility before facing public-market scrutiny.