Box raising $100M more as storage wars heat up

Cromwell Schubarth: Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal; Email | Twitter | Google+

Box last month authorized the sale of another $100 million in equity as competition with Dropbox and others in the storage and file-sharing secor grows.
VC Experts, a Louisiana-based research firm, reported on Wednesday that it found an Oct. 14 amendment about the fund-raising that Box made to its incorporation documents in the state of Delaware.
"This could be the last big push prior to a potential IPO in 2014," the firm said in a note.
Los Altos-based Box, led by CEO Aaron Levie, authorized issuing a new series of more than 5.5 million shares of preferred stock worth $18 each for a total of $100 million, which implies a valuation for the company of almost $2 billion, according to Justin Byers, VC Experts' director of business intelligence.
The news comes after a recent report that Box plans to do an IPO to raise about $500 million in the first half of 2014. The company raised $125 million last year at a valuation of more than $1 billion and that was increased to $150 million in January.
Another report this week said that San Francisco rival Dropbox is raising $250 million at a valuation of about $8 billion.