Dropbox helped end the physical thumb drive era, but the cloud is getting crowded

Published

3 years ago

November 17, 2022

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Dropbox CEO Drew Houston speaks onstage during the Dropbox Work In Progress Conference at Pier 48 on September 25, 2019 in San Francisco

Matt Winkelmeyer | Dropbox | Getty Images

In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later.

One year after graduating from MIT in 2006, Drew Houston began working with Arash Ferdowsi in hopes of creating one of the first cloud-based file sharing platforms that would eliminate the annoyances of physical thumb drives. The result was Dropbox, a company that has now made a name for itself as one of the leading organization and collaboration tools worldwide.

Today, Dropbox reports having more than 700 million registered users in more than 180 countries and regions globally. The company brought in $2.2 billion worth of revenue in 2021 and is a five-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company.

With goals to reduce busywork and help organizations stay in sync, Dropbox offers a suite of systems that include cloud storage platforms, password managers and computer backup systems. It has grown its offerings in acquiring platforms such as HelloSign in January 2019, Valt in November 2019 and DocSend in March 2021.

In its most recent quarter, Dropbox reported $591 million in revenue with a net profit of $83.2 million. Over 17.5 million users pay for its services, and the company has said more than 90% of its revenue results from individual consumers buying subscriptions.

“In particular, we’re pleased with the results of the changes to our team’s plans, and excited about our progress innovating around new products and driving multi product adoption, including the release of Capture to all Dropbox users and the introduction of the rebranded Dropbox Sign,” Houston, who is now Dropbox’s CEO, said in a statement. “As we look towards 2023 and beyond, I’m proud of our team’s execution towards our strategy while maintaining a healthy balance of growth and profitability.”

Dropbox went public in March 2018, listing a highly-anticipated $756 million IPO on the Nasdaq. One of the largest IPOs in tech at the time, Dropbox was valued at more than $12 billion on its first day of trading. Its performance since an initial surge has been rocky.

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As one of the first companies to embrace the shift to a virtual workplace at the beginning of the pandemic, Dropbox announced its “virtual first” remote work setup in October 2020, asking employees to work remotely 90% of the time. The program, which officially launched in April 2021, was a significant shift for the business that once flaunted perks like award-winning cuisine in its cafeteria, and a top-notch gym and yoga studio, all at no cost for employees. The change also cost the San Francisco-based company almost $400 million in real estate, turning it unprofitable in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Even with some reports that the business is seeing high turnover rates attributed to the previous in-office bonuses being taken away, Dropbox has picked up on “boomerang” employees, bringing many previous employees back to the company on account of the workplace flexibility it now offers, Houston said at the CNBC Work Summit in October.

“We’ve been able to punch way above our weight class,” Houston said at the CNBC Work Summit. “I think the companies who offer that flexibility are going to be able to outrecruit, outretain, outperform ones that don’t.”

Dropbox continues to face many competitors in the cloud space – Google, Microsoft and Apple, to name a few of the most notable, as well as fellow former startup to IPO, Box. The company is forecasting revenue of $2.3 billion for 2022 and foresees revenue between $592 million and $595 million for the fourth quarter. But the stock remains well below its first-day trade from back in 2018, and at roughly half the value of its highest market peak, caught up in the tech downturn that has cratered many former high-flying, high growth startups.

“We’ve always lived in a competitive environment … and importantly all our growth has happened in that environment,” Houston said at the time of the Dropbox IPO. “We don’t see Amazon in our space. You know, things can change. We don’t count anyone out.”

To create long-term value, Dropbox is building on momentum through promoting new products and acquisitions, Houston said on CNBC’s “TechCheck” in November 2021. The company plans to introduce more of its products to existing customers in hopes of increasing the number of paid users on its platform, Houston said.

“We certainly made a lot of progress since we went public, and we have a lot of opportunity in front of us,” Houston told TechCheck.

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Technology

Oracle stock jumps after $30 billion annual cloud deal revealed in filing

Published

6 hours ago

June 30, 2025

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Oracle stock jumps after billion annual cloud deal revealed in filing

Oracle CEO Safra Catz speaks at the FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach, Florida, on Feb. 20, 2025.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Oracle shares jumped more than 5% after a recent filing showed a cloud deal that would add over $30 billion annually.

CEO Safra Catz is slated to share the deal news at a company meeting Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The revenues are expected to start hitting in the 2028 fiscal year.

“Oracle is off to a strong start in FY26,” Catz is expected to say, according to the filing. “Our MultiCloud database revenue continues to grow at over 100%, and we signed multiple large cloud services agreements including one that is expected to contribute more than $30 billion in annual revenue starting in FY28.”

The deals revealed Monday by Catz will not affect the company’s 2026 guidance, according to the filing.

Trump says he has group of ‘very wealthy people’ ready to buy TikTok

Published

16 hours ago

June 30, 2025

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Trump says he has group of ‘very wealthy people’ ready to buy TikTok

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 4 that he would again postpone enforcement of a law banning TikTok unless its Chinese owner ByteDance divests from the platform.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview aired on Sunday that he has a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy TikTok, whose identities he can reveal in about two weeks.

Trump added that the deal will probably need Beijing’s approval to move forward, but said “I think President Xi will probably do it,” in reference to China’s leader Xi Jinping.

The president made the off-the-cuff remarks while discussing the possibility of another pause of his “reciprocal” tariffs on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”

Tiktok’s fate in the U.S. has been in doubt since the approval of a law in 2024 that sought to ban the platform unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested from it. The legislation was driven by concerns that the Chinese government could manipulate content and access sensitive data from American users.

Earlier this month, Trump extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest from the platform’s U.S. business. It was his third extension since the Supreme Court upheld the TikTok law just a few days before Trump’s second presidential inauguration in January. The new deadline is Sept. 17.

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, of PAFACA, had originally been set to take effect on Jan. 19, after which app store operators and internet service providers would be penalized for supporting TikTok.

TikTok went dark in the U.S. ahead of the original deadline, but was restored after Trump provided it with assurances on the extension.

Trump, who credited the app with boosting his support among young voters in the last presidential election, has maintained that he would like to see the platform stay afloat under new ownership.

Potential buyers that have voiced interest in the app include Trump insiders such as Oracle’s Larry Ellison to firms like AppLovin and Perplexity AI.

Most of the potential bidders for TikTok don't fit both Washington and Beijing's requirements

However, it’s unclear if ByteDance would be willing to sell the company. Any potential divestiture is likely to require approval from the Chinese government.

A deal that would have spun off TikTok’s U.S. operations and allowed ByteDance to retain a minority position had been in the works in April, but was derailed by the announcement of Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, Reuters reported that month.

The president previously floated a proposal for American stakeholders to buy the company and then sell a 50% stake to the U.S. government as part of a joint venture.

Experts have previously told CNBC that any potential deal could face legal challenges in the U.S., depending on whether it complies with PAFACA.

Technology

Nvidia insiders dump more than $1 billion in stock, according to report

Published

1 day ago

June 29, 2025

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Nvidia insiders dump more than billion in stock, according to report

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote, part of the 9th edition of the VivaTech technology startup and innovation fair, held at the Dôme de Paris in the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Mustafa Yalcin | Anadolu | Getty Images

Insiders at artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia have dumped more than $1 billion in stock over the last year, according to a report from the Financial Times.

About $500 million worth of sales occurred over the last month as the market notched new highs and shook off geopolitical tensions that had rattled investors, according to the report. The stock is up more than 17% this year despite concerns over curbs limiting AI chip sales overseas and 44% over the last three months.

Securities filings revealed that the tech titan recently unloaded about $15 million worth of shares as part of his more than $900 million plan announced in March to sell up to 6 million shares through the end of the year. Huang’s net worth totals about $138 billion, placing him as 11th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Last week, the chipmaking giant hit a fresh record and rallied for five straight days following the stock sales and an annual shareholder meeting, where the CEO called robotics the biggest opportunity for the company after AI. That helped the chipmaker regain its seat as the most valuable company ahead Microsoft and Apple.

The FT article cited a report from VerityData, which noted that the jump in shares above $150 prompted the stock dump.

Last year, Huang unloaded more than $700 million in Nvidia shares as part of a prearranged plan.

A Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

Read the complete Financial Times report here.