Cloud pleaser: Dropbox hits 500m users and claims productivity crown (infographic)

8 Mar 2016

Dropbox is the cloud hub of choice for half a billion people, who use it to collaborate

Multi-device cloud storage platform Dropbox has grown its users to 500m, up from 400m in June 2015.

Co-founder and CEO Drew Houston said not only is this a pivotal milestone, but the evidence is that many of these users are using Dropbox as a way to work together.

“Since we started, Dropbox users have created 3.3bn connections by sharing with each other,” Houston said when announcing the milestone.

“That’s a 51pc jump in just the last year. And, as new people join, they’re bringing friends, family, and co-workers along. 44pc of new accounts were opened when existing users introduced people to Dropbox. That’s making for an even more creative and collaborative community.”

Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi after they were frustrated with working with multiple computers and decided a way had to be found to allow people access the files they needed from any machine.

The company is currently valued at $10bn at a time when the valuation of so-called “unicorns” is increasingly being called into question. Total equity funding in Dropbox currently stands at $607.2m from 23 investors, including U2 rockers Bono and The Edge.

Houston and Ferdowsi said that they are seeing more and more companies, from filmmakers and creatives at Sundance to mining firms, using Dropbox as a way of speeding turnaround time for customers.

For example, they pointed out News Corp’s 25,000 employees have made Dropbox part of its increasingly cloud-centric workflows.

“Even though Dropbox is based in the US, our last 100m users have come from all over the globe,” Houston and Ferdowsi said in a post marking the 500m-user milestone.

“Brazilians, Indians, Brits, and Germans join Americans at the top of the list of new signups.

“The businesses on Dropbox, too, are making it a truly global community. Swedish distiller The Absolut Company and Japanese advertising/PR agency Dentsu are just two of the companies using Dropbox to bridge gaps with colleagues around the world,” Houston said.