Cloud collaboration and storage firm Box has added £150 million to its coffers as it looks to expand its customer base and provide business users with a wider range of products.
The funds come from Coatue Management LLC and private equity firm TPG Growth and one of the latter’s directors will now sit on the Box board.
Box boasts more than 27 million individual users and just under a quarter of a million businesses – including 99 per cent of the Fortune 500 – are currently using its products. However, the firm has ambitious growth targets and wants to swell these numbers, in addition to investing further in its technology portfolio.
"Our mission is to help organisations be more productive, collaborative and competitive by connecting people and their most important information. This focus has been instrumental in building a customer base that includes some of the most influential businesses in the world,” said Aaron Levie, Box’s co-founder and CEO.
“We’re excited to work with TPG Growth and Coatue as we continue to aggressively invest in our customers, technology, and future growth.”
Meanwhile, industry watchers are still waiting for Box to go public. It filed for IPO back in March but, as yet hasn’t pushed ahead with those plans and remains in a ‘quiet period.’
A report by the WSJ suggests the firm is waiting until the market picks up and that movement is expected in early September. If that happens, it would coincide nicely with the firm’s annual Boxworks event, which is being held in San Francisco from 2 September.
"Our plan continues to be to go public when it makes the most sense for Box and the market,” a Box spokesperson said in a statement.
“As always, investing in our customers, technology, and future growth remains our top priority. TPG and Coatue have great track records with growth companies like Box and we're excited to work with them as we execute on our strategy."
In addition to celebrating the opportunities afforded by this latest round of funding, Box has other reasons to be pleased this week. It was the only cloud company to be crowned as a leader in the enterprise file synchronisation and sharing (EFSS) market by Gartner in its 'Magic Quandrant' ranking methodology.
“We believe it’s the marriage of end-user design and elegance with the security, controls and scalability that allows us to achieve such high praise from our enterprise customers and the broader industry,” Joely Urton, Box’s director of analyst relations, said in a blog post.
“2014 has been busy year for Box as we continue to build products and enhance our platform to redefine how we work.”
