Report: Dropbox filed to go public without uttering a peep

In 2011 Steve Jobs reportedly told Dropbox founder Drew Houston his company was “a feature, not a product.” Six years later, the file-sharing company looks to have confidentially filed for a US initial public offering (IPO).

Bloomberg reports Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan will lead the potential listing, which looks to be one of the most significant in the technology space. Not only has Dropbox reported annual sales of $1 billion, but achieved a valuation of $10 billion during its last private funding round in 2014.

That’s not so large compared to a lot of other companies. ADT looks to raise as much as $2.1 billion in its own IPO. Spotify reportedly confidentially went public with a valuation of $19 billion — though it has a more complicated financial situation than Dropbox.

However, not everything is set in stone, as Dropbox is reportedly talking with other banks that could fill in additional roles in the IPO. If everything goes according to plan, Dropbox will reportedly list sometime during the first half of 2018.

We also do not know if Dropbox will sell shares above its $10 billion valuation, though people with knowledge of the matter said stock could trade higher once it goes public.

In other words, Dropbox could potentially see its value increase even more once the private company goes public.

According to Bloomberg, Dropbox spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on its cloud infrastructure to become less dependent on Amazon’s servers, which is difficult for a software company with hundreds of millions of users to pull off.

The company has also constantly updated its collaboration software Dropbox Paper, which features new professional plans. Suffice it to say Dropbox has been very busy.

This is a developing story, and we will update this post as additional information becomes available.