Dropbox Acquires AI Storage Startup Tigris Data for $350M to Launch DBX Agent Cloud

For nearly two decades, Dropbox built its business on helping humans store and share files. Now, it wants to provide the same foundational memory layer for artificial intelligence. The company announced Thursday it will acquire Sunnyvale-based Tigris Data for $350 million in cash. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, represents Dropbox's largest acquisition to date, surpassing its $230 million purchase of HelloSign in 2019.

Founded in 2021 by former Uber engineers, Tigris provides globally distributed, S3-compatible object storage specifically optimized for AI workloads. Unlike traditional cloud storage that often locks developers into a single vendor's ecosystem, Tigris allows AI applications to access training datasets and model artifacts seamlessly across multiple cloud providers. This technology will serve as the backbone for Dropbox's newly unveiled DBX Agent Cloud, a standalone infrastructure service aimed directly at developers rather than end consumers.

The acquisition signals a profound strategic shift for Dropbox under co-CEO Ashraf Alkarmi. Rather than merely adding AI features to its existing consumer workspace, the company is attempting to monetize the infrastructure layer of the generative AI boom. As AI agents evolve to perform complex, multi-step tasks, they require a persistent file system to store context and intermediate outputs. By providing a portable storage environment for these autonomous systems, Dropbox is positioning itself as a neutral layer in an increasingly fragmented AI ecosystem.