Dropbox has raised a massive $250 million funding round, valuing the company at $10 billion according to the Wall Street Journal. The new funding round is led by a BlackRock fund, according to the WSJ, which cites “two people familiar with the deal” as the source of the report.
This is actually the second time that Dropbox has raised $250 million: It did so in 2011 in a round that included Goldman Sachs, Sequoia, Index Ventures and Accel Partners. Back in November, a rumor about an additional $250 million raise put the valuation of the company at a supposed $8 billion, which, based on various revenue estimates, could have been viewed as anywhere from expensive to cheap.
When news of the raise was first circulating last year, revenue for the cloud storage company was rumored to be in the “hundreds of millions of dollars” range according to BusinessWeek, which helps justify the company’s huge valuation. Other companies in the same ball park in terms of worth pre-IPO include Twitter, which was valued at $10 billion back in May, 2013; Google, which went public with a $2.7 billion valuation; and Box, which is a direct Dropbox competitor and had a valuation of $2 billion when it raised $100 million late last year.
The fact that Dropbox raised at a $10 billion valuation instead of $8 billion could indicate that the round was competitive, with third parties bidding for a chance to scoop up Dropbox shares. And, naturally, at a valuation that rich, Dropbox is placing itself far up the IPO queue.
Prior to this raise, Dropbox has collected $257 million in funding. Provided that the WSJ has the new capital story correct, Dropbox will have raised a total of over half a billion dollars.
Dropbox’s new capital dwarfs the $100 million that its traditional rival Box recently absorbed, perhaps granting it a competitive edge as both companies look to expand their core business and diversify their product lines.
Also included in this round are existing investment partners, the WSJ says, but it’s unclear who exactly was involved at this stage. We’ve reached out to Dropbox to find out more about the reported funding and the backers in the round, and will update if we find out more.
More to come…
