Dropbox has swallowed up start-up Cove and its former Facebook staff in a new acquisition.
Cove, which focused on collaboration and communication for medium sized organisations, was never publicly launched but its talent soon caught the eye of Dropbox.
The cloud storage giant was tempted by married team Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi, who were both Facebook engineers between 2005 and 2010. Sanghvi was Facebook’s first female engineer and a product manager, while Agarwal was positioned as the engineering director.
The LA Times has reported that Agarwal has been awarded a new position and will now run Dropbox’s engineering team while Sanghvi is the new head of recruitment and other operations.
Cove co-founder Akhil Wable and Cove employee Joshua Jenkins are also set to be brought into the Dropbox mix, although it is currently unknown in what capacity.
Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston emphasised the importance of having the right talent when competing in the ICT industry. Housten stated, “Building a world-class engineering organisation is a top priority for us…The team at Cove represents some of the best talent in the Valley ans we look forward to the technology, skills and perspective they will bring to Dropbox.”
Sanghvi disclosed in an interview with AllThingsD. that the move was unsurprising considering the friendly relationship Sanghvi and Agarwal had with Dropbox previous to the move.
The deal marks Dropbox’s first acquisition, but probably not its last as the Silicon Valley giant closed an astonishing $250 million, from a funding round in October of last year. At that time Dropbox hinted that they intended to grow its team and pursue acquisitions.
The financial terms of the buy-out were not disclosed, as Dropbox is still keeping the details under wraps.
