Box, Inc. (BOX) Business Profile

What it does

Box sells cloud software that helps organizations manage and work with their content, including documents, videos, blueprints and other files. Its platform covers the content lifecycle: creating or importing files, sharing and editing them, obtaining approvals and signatures, and retaining them. Customers can use it within their organizations and with external partners.

The service combines file storage and collaboration with security, compliance and workflow tools. Administrators can set access permissions and retention policies, while employees can share and work on files across devices. Box Sign handles electronic signatures, and Box Relay automates tasks such as routing documents and assigning work. Box Apps lets customers build applications without writing code.

Box also provides AI tools that can answer questions about documents, extract information and help customers build custom agents. Its platform connects to more than 1,500 business applications, and developers can use its interfaces to build their own content applications.

Box is headquartered in Redwood City. Aaron Levie is chief executive officer. The company focuses on larger enterprises, while also serving smaller organizations and offering a free version for individuals.

How it makes money

Box primarily sells its software as a subscription. Fees depend on customer requirements, including the number of users, API and AI unit entitlements, and the functionality deployed. Customers can buy individual add-on products alongside a subscription or choose bundled plans containing multiple products.

Contracts generally run from one to three years or more. Box typically invoices at the beginning of the contract term, with payments arranged in annual, multi-year, quarterly or monthly installments. It recognizes subscription and premier services revenue ratably over the contract term rather than recording the entire subscription value when it is signed.

The platform can be purchased for a small group, an enterprise deployment targeting specific uses, or an agreement intended to cover nearly all of an organization’s information workers. Customers can also use Box Platform to build content applications for their own operations and for customers, suppliers and partners. Box Consulting provides implementation and migration services.

Box seeks to expand existing relationships by adding seats, selling additional products and moving customers to broader plans. It also monetizes use of its platform by external AI agents through AI units and API volume. In the second quarter of fiscal 2027, suites customers accounted for 69% of revenue.

For the year ended January 31, 2026, revenue was $1.18 billion; second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue was $321 million.

Customers and how it sells

As of January 31, 2026, Box had over 100,000 paying organizations and offered its service in 25 languages. A paying organization can be a company, an educational or government institution, or a distinct business unit of a larger corporation. No single customer represented 10% or more of revenue in the year ended January 31, 2026.

Box targets enterprises in industries including life sciences, financial services, retail and consumer packaged goods, and the public sector. Deployments range from small employee groups to enterprise agreements covering thousands of seats or intended for most information workers. Box also serves individual users through a free version.

The company sells through direct sales teams, an online self-service portal, resellers and systems integrators. Users can invite others to collaborate, which can lead an organization to bring its users together under an enterprise agreement. Box also uses consulting and implementation partners to serve customer needs.

Box sells internationally and focuses on growth in key regions. Box Zones lets customers store and manage content locally in certain regions to address data-residency and privacy requirements.

Suppliers and costs

Box develops and maintains software services around content, including search, sharing, security, file viewing and logging. Its cloud infrastructure is supported by public cloud hosting services operated by third parties in various locations. Box AI uses models from several providers, including Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI, Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, and Anthropic’s Claude and Amazon Titan through Amazon Bedrock.

Box incurs costs to acquire customers before recognizing their subscription revenue over time. Marketing costs are expensed as incurred, while substantially all sales commission expenses are deferred and amortized over a period of benefit. Sales and marketing expenses were $404.0 million for the year ended January 31, 2026, and research and development expenses were $294.5 million for the same year.

Box said limited access to certain public cloud infrastructure components was affecting the efficiency improvements it expected to deliver during fiscal 2027. It also identified growing use of Box Platform and Box AI as a factor affecting gross margin expectations.

Competitive position

Box competes in content management, file synchronization and sharing, electronic signatures, workflow automation, AI, security and governance. The content management market is fragmented and changes as technology and customer requirements evolve.

In content management, Box names Microsoft SharePoint and OpenText Documentum as primary competitors. In enterprise file synchronization and sharing, it names Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive as primary competitors, and Dropbox to a lesser extent. Some competitors have greater resources, larger marketing budgets or established relationships with Box’s partners and customers.

Box’s platform combines security controls, collaboration, workflows and AI with integrations across other business applications. It offers more than 1,500 pre-built integrations and APIs for custom applications. Customers can also use Box Shuttle to move content from other systems and retain features such as permissions and version history.

Our reading: Integrations and APIs are a meaningful source of customer connection because they let Box content support other applications and custom workflows, although Box depends on third parties to maintain interoperability. Our reading: Security and compliance features can help Box compete for sensitive content, but other vendors also compete in those markets. Our reading: Migration tools and enterprise-wide deployments can make Box useful across an organization, while competitors with greater resources remain a constraint.

Growth opportunities

Box’s growth strategy includes winning new organizations, expanding deployments at existing customers and selling additional products and bundled plans. It focuses on larger enterprises, industry-specific uses, international regions and partnerships with resellers and systems integrators. The company also uses a free individual offering and online sales to reach potential customers.

For the year ended January 31, 2026, revenue grew 8% year-over-year. Box’s non-cancellable backlog was $1.06 billion as of January 31, 2026. The company attributed the increase in backlog to factors including existing-customer expansion, conversion to multi-product suites, renewal timing, longer average contract terms and new customers. Box cautions that backlog fluctuations are not always a reliable indicator of future revenue.

Box is developing AI and automation capabilities for document processing and content workflows. It announced new integrations for external AI agents and is modernizing metadata management, large-file support and file-system capabilities to support migration from older content systems. A federal agency upgraded to Enterprise Advanced with a 4x seat expansion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027.

Box’s second-quarter fiscal 2027 net retention rate was 106%, with seat expansion and price-per-seat increases contributing to the result. For the full fiscal year ending January 31, 2027, Box expects revenue of approximately $1.29 billion.

Structural risks

• Competition and renewals: Box’s results could suffer if it cannot compete effectively, retain customers, expand their use of its services or attract new customers. Slower development of the cloud enterprise-services market could also affect the business.
• Security and privacy: Actual or perceived security vulnerabilities, breaches of security controls or unauthorized access to Box or customer data could harm the business. International privacy and data-transfer laws can also require data to be stored and processed in designated territories.
• Third-party technology: Box depends on its services working with technology developed by others and on partners and developers building integrations. Partners may not continue to provide integration rights, and defects in third-party applications could disrupt customers’ use of Box.
• Cloud capacity and costs: Box said limited access to some public cloud infrastructure components was affecting expected infrastructure efficiencies. Growing use of its platform and AI services was also affecting gross margin expectations.
• Economic and customer spending: Inflation, tariffs, currency movements, reductions in U.S. federal spending and other economic conditions may contribute to customer churn, delayed sales cycles and reduced budgets for Box’s services.
• People: Box depends on key employees and other skilled personnel to operate and grow. Difficulty hiring, retaining or motivating them could limit its ability to grow effectively.

Bottom line

Our reading

Box is a subscription software business built around managing organizational content, with expansion tied to additional seats, products and usage. [item1] Its integrations, security controls and growing AI features connect it to customer workflows, but those connections also depend on third-party technology. [item1] Competition, renewals, security and cloud infrastructure costs remain important exposures as Box invests in broader use of the platform. [item1a] [call_qa]