Box Just Scored Another Huge Customer: Toyota
Jul 10, 2014, 02:50 IST
Wikipedia/Fortune Brainstorm TECH 2011Box CEO Aaron LevieCloud storage startup Box announced that it snagged another huge customer on Wednesday. Toyota is choosing Box for its entire North America business units.
Box didn't comment on how big this deal was financially, merely saying that it covered thousands of employees. But this is Box's first major corporate deal since raising $150 million at a $2.4 billion valuation earlier this week.
By using Box, Toyota employees will be able to access and share content across any device, Box says.
Today's deal shows Box is snagging big corporate contracts. Just two months ago, Box announced a similar deal with General Electronics, which CEO Aaron Levie called a "tipping point" for the company. The GE deal will help it land more big customers, and encourage more developers to write apps for the Box platform, Levie told Forbes' Alex Konrad.
Box already claimed some big customers like eBay, Proctor & Gamble, and Schneider Electric. The company has 39,000 corporate clients in total and 27 million individual users, it says.
All of that could help the company encourage investors to bite when it goes public, which it will do soon. Box filed its pre-IPO paperwork in March, but hasn't pulled the trigger yet. Sources say it delayed its IPO, blaming a cooling market for cloud software companies. The company is still reportedly going to go public this year.
Investors may still have doubts about Box's finances, because the company is burning through its cash at a high rate, which some estimate to be twice as large as its competitors'. But it's spending its money mostly on sales and marketing, and deals like this one seem to prove that this choice is paying off.
In fact, Box's sales rose 94% last quarter to $45.3 million, compared to $23.4 million from the same quarter of last year. It reported a $38.5 million loss for that quarter.