Five years in existence, Dropbox has grown to earn 200 million users of its cloud storage service and raised $257 million.
Now the San Francisco-based company is looking to raise an additional $250 million in venture capital funding, while seeking a valuation of $8 billion.
Dropbox has yet to spend all of its money taken in during the last funding round and needs a cash infusion to fuel growing ambitions. Former investors include Y Combinator, Accel Partners, Sequoia and U2's Bono, among others.
Revenue for the company has grown 20 fold since late 2010 and is now in the "hundreds of millions of dollars" per year range, said people familiar with Dropbox's funding plans. When asked about the funding round by the publication, Dropbox spokeswoman Ana Andreescu said "What we can say is that with over 200 million users and 4 million businesses, Dropbox has continued and strong momentum."
News comes as Dropbox announced an update allowing access between personal and business accounts without switching last week. This means the company has huge plans for its business sector, something that may require a huge influx of cash. The money could go toward a dedicated sales team and new technology. Currently, Dropbox enjoys millions of enterprise customers. According to company CEO Drew Houston, 97 percent of Fortune 500 companies, including Kayak, National Geographic and BCBG, utilize the service.
Houston says that more features for its business sector are in the works in a statement.
"More importantly, this is a huge step toward making Dropbox even better for work, and we're excited to share everything else we're cooking up," said Houston in reference to Dropbox's initiative to make its service more intuitive for businesses and personal use.
Dropbox's rivals include Microsoft, Google, Amazon.com and Box. Box recently chose three investment banks to lead it through a 2014 IPO and has raised $312 million to date.
