Dropbox plans to acquire Tigris Data for $350 million

Dropbox has announced plans to acquire Tigris Data for approximately $350 million in cash to bolster its AI infrastructure. The transaction, unveiled on November 5, 2026, is described as the largest acquisition in Dropbox’s history since its founding in 2007 and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary conditions. Dropbox has indicated it currently has no plans to reduce headcount in connection with the deal, after cutting 9% of its global workforce last month.

The planned purchase gives Dropbox a cloud storage platform specifically built for AI workloads and applications that run across multiple cloud providers. By acquiring Tigris rather than building a new stack from the ground up, Dropbox seeks a faster route into the market for AI infrastructure.

Tigris Data is a Sunnyvale, California-based startup founded in November 2021 by former Uber engineers who helped develop that company’s storage infrastructure. The company operates a globally distributed, S3‑compatible object storage platform designed for AI use cases. Its technology lets customers store and access data across different regions and cloud environments, automatically positioning data closer to users and compute resources to reduce access times and improve performance.

Tigris is building a network of localized data storage centers intended to meet the distributed compute needs of modern AI workloads. Since launch, it has raised about $31.9 million, including a $25 million Series A round in October 2025 led by Spark Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Basis Set Ventures and other backers.

The Tigris acquisition is meant to power DBX Agent Cloud, a new Dropbox storage platform aimed at businesses and developers building AI models and agents. At launch, DBX Agent Cloud will initially offer standalone object storage, allowing organizations to purchase storage separately and use it with existing tools and applications built for Amazon (AMZN) S3.

Planned enhancements to DBX Agent Cloud include capabilities to help AI systems work with varied content types such as documents, images, audio and video. Dropbox also plans filesystem-style features that will enable AI agents to manage files and maintain continuity across tasks and sessions.

Beyond infrastructure, Dropbox is integrating more AI capabilities into its existing file-sharing products. Users will be able to ask AI to perform supported tasks using their files, choose between different AI models, and connect Dropbox content to third-party tools including ChatGPT, Claude and Muse, with results returning to Dropbox.

Dropbox states that the updated AI-enabled experience has already reached more than 70,000 teams. The initial rollout targets eligible Standard and Advanced customers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, with broader availability planned for 2027.

The Tigris deal coincides with what Dropbox describes as a significant shift in its AI strategy, expanding from storing and sharing files into selling infrastructure for AI applications. For developers and companies, DBX Agent Cloud opens a new market focused on the storage layer behind AI models and agents, while embedded AI features in Dropbox’s core product are aimed at helping existing customers find, understand, create, edit and organize their content.

Recent acquisitions such as Reclaim.ai, Promoted.ai and Mobius Labs show Dropbox has been adding AI-focused capabilities through prior deals. The planned Tigris purchase, as its largest acquisition to date, underscores the company’s effort to deepen its role in AI infrastructure while enhancing AI-driven tools for its current user base.