Fast-growing file-sharing and storage startup Dropbox Inc is trying to raise $250 million in additional funding in coming weeks, which would value the six-year-old company at more than $8 billion, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Monday.<\/p>\n
The company may become the latest hot Silicon Valley startup to take advantage of flush investors and stratospheric valuations for fledgling tech companies.<\/p>\n
Loss-making Twitter Inc is now valued north of $20 billion after its debut; Pinterest, which only recently began to clarify its business model, last month won a round of financing that valued the nascent website at $3.8 billion.<\/p>\n
Dropbox, which is increasingly competing with Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage, wants to beef up its sales and engineering teams and acquire technology, the Bloomberg story said citing two people with knowledge of its plans.<\/p>\n
Dropbox declined to comment on the funding report.<\/p>\n
Last week, the six-year-old company unveiled what it called one of the most comprehensive upgrades to its service for businesses, including a feature that allows users to easily maintain both personal and corporate accounts.<\/p>\n
Those features come at a time large rivals like Microsoft and Amazon Inc are muscling into cloud-storage, a strategic weapon in an era of widespread mobile computing.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2007 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, Dropbox rapidly accumulated users by touting its ease-of-use and polished interface that syncs files across multiple devices and operating systems. Houston said earlier this month that Dropbox has 200 million users.<\/p>\n
Rival startup Box is now preparing to go public in 2014, Reuters reported earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Google preps DropBox competitor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Beyond Twitter: the next wave of tech IPOs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n