Credit: Dropbox
Dropbox plans to acquire Tigris Data, a startup that provides cloud storage for AI workloads, for $350M. The company announced the deal alongside the launch of a new service aimed at businesses and developers building AI applications and agents.
Called DBX Agent Cloud, the service is designed to provide infrastructure for AI workloads across multiple clouds. It launches with standalone object storage compatible with tools built for Amazon S3, Amazon’s cloud storage service.
The move takes Dropbox beyond its traditional business of file storage and sharing, as it looks to become part of the infrastructure supporting AI applications. It comes six months after Ashraf Alkarmi became co-CEO.
“The value of AI depends on the content and context it can work with,” Alkarmi said.
Tigris was founded by former Uber engineers. Its platform allows developers to store and access data across different cloud providers rather than depending on a single vendor.
Dropbox said the acquisition would help it expand into AI infrastructure more quickly, drawing on nearly two decades of experience operating large-scale storage systems.
“Combining that experience with our product and close relationships with developers would help us support larger workloads,” said Ovais Tariq, Tigris co-founder and chief executive.
Dropbox plans to add content processing and filesystem capabilities to DBX Agent Cloud next. Content processing converts documents, images, audio and video into formats that AI systems can use. Filesystem features would give AI agents a persistent space to store and manage files between tasks.
AI applications and agents need access to training data, model files and media stored across multiple cloud platforms. Dropbox wants to offer companies a portable place for that content, allowing them to move between providers as their requirements change.
The company is also reworking its core product around AI agents. Users can now describe a task in natural language, and Dropbox will find the relevant files, suggest a plan, and carry out supported actions once they approve it.
Those actions include summarising folders, comparing document versions, drafting files, editing PDFs and images, transcribing recordings and trimming video clips. The system can also organise folders, move or rename files, and complete several steps through a single request.
Actions remain subject to existing file-sharing permissions. Dropbox also keeps a record of changes and allows users to undo supported operations.
Customers can switch between AI models during a session. They can also work with Dropbox files through external tools, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Muse, without uploading the files again. Completed work is then saved back to Dropbox.
The new features have already reached more than 80,000 teams. The initial rollout covers eligible Standard and Advanced teams in the US, UK and Australia, with support limited to English. Dropbox plans to expand availability in 2027.
The company has more than 700 million registered users across around 180 countries. It has not said when it expects the Tigris acquisition to close.
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