UPDATED 08:30 EDT / JULY 31 2012

Box Closes $125M Round as Consumer Cloud Attracts Investors

Cloud storage is really getting huge on the consumer side.  Nowadays, you hear a lot of people talking about saving their files on Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, SugarSync or any number of cloud storage platforms.  Though not all the users know what the cloud is and what it actually does, the main point is that people are using it.  And it’s not only consumers who are seeing the great potential of cloud storage service providers – investors are in on the fun.

Box

Box will be announcing a $125 million round of funding led by growth investment fund General Atlantic with two other institutional investors participating in the round though the names have been withheld for the moment.

The deal includes Gary Reiner, the former CIO of General Electric and an operating partner at GA, and director at Hewlett-Packard, joining Box’s board.

This new round of funding brings their total capital raised to $285 million.  This is a huge addition so people are now asking if Box is going to go public anytime soon.

“We can do way more as a private company than we can as a public company,” says Aaron Levie, founder and CEO of Box. “Taking this round gives us the foundation to build the foundation we need.”

Reiner was also vague on IPO plans stating that they’re company’s role is just to guide Box and help in anyway they can – for now.

SugarSync

Earlier this month, SugarSync closed a $10 million round of funding led by ORIX Venture Finance.  The finding will be used to accelerate the expansion of their datacenter footprint as they continue their rapid global growth.

“SugarSync is clearly the technology leader in the fast growing Cloud storage, sync and sharing market, and as a result consumers are flocking to the service,” said Michael David, Managing Director and Co-Head of ORIX Venture Finance. “In addition to mass consumer adoption of the service, some of the world’s leading brands have selected SugarSync as their Cloud partner. This combination is driving SugarSync’s worldwide expansion, and we are proud to help enable their continuing growth plans.”

Dropbox

Though it’s been awhile since Dropbox’s funding round, they recently updated their Android app earlier in June to feature video streaming support as well as support for the Korean language for Dropbox in general.  Then news surfaced that AT&T and Verizon aren’t offering the free Dropbox storage for the Samsung Galaxy SIII as the two networks are said to be dreading the huge data traffic if they do offer the free 50GB from Dropbox to their SIII subscribers.  And of course there’s the controversy regarding piracy with the app, Boxopus,  that unites BitTorrent and Dropbox so whatever you download can be automatically saved on your Dropbox account, making all your files available to you anytime, anywhere.


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