Online storage services provider Dropbox raises $250 mn
20 Jan 2014
Online storage services provider Dropbox Inc has raised about $250 million financing from investment manager BlackRock Inc and other investors that values the company at $10 billion, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal which cited people familiar with the deal.
The newspaper said the company's valuation had more than doubled since late 2011, when the San Francisco-based company was valued by investors at $4 billion. More recently, the company got a price more than its expectations when it approached investors in November.
In 2011, the company raised $250 million in financing from Goldman Sachs and venture-capital firms including Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and Accel Partners.
The report said the funding would enable the company accelerate chief executive Drew Houston's push into business software.
Dropbox is targeting businesses that are moving to the cloud.
The company, which gained popularity by giving free storage and sync services to consumers, has over 200 million users. It was established in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi.
According to tech news and analysis site Re/code's Liz Gannes reported that a couple of more investors were still thinking of jumping in with huge investments of their own, reports.
She said, "What's still in flux is an additional $100 million to $150 million that mutual fund giants Fidelity and T. Rowe Price - who have already invested in Dropbox - are angling to add to the round, again at the $10 billion pre-money valuation."
According to Gannes, if these comes through, the additional investment would not change the company's $10-billion valuation.
With a $250-million investment, Dropbox would have raised $507 million total since its founding according to CrunchBase, which added that with another $150 million, it would have raised $657 million.
