Dropbox acquires Tigris Data for $350M, releases new AI productivity features

Dropbox Inc. is acquiring cloud storage startup Tigris Data Inc. for $350 million.

The company announced the deal today in conjunction with a major update to its product portfolio. It introduced DBX Agent Cloud, a service that artificial intelligence agents can use to store their data. Dropbox is also adding new AI productivity features to its flagship file sharing platform.

Sunnyvale, California-based Tigris Data offers an object storage service that runs across multiple public clouds. The company says that it enables applications to read and write several times faster than competing offerings. Furthermore, the service includes several features designed to optimize AI workloads.

AI agents often run in sandboxes that include, among other resources, the data they need to carry out their work. Loading data into a sandbox can be a relatively time-consuming process, which slows agent performance. Tigris Data offers a feature called bucket forms that speeds up the workflow. Furthermore, it prevents agents from modifying information that is used by other workloads.

Tigris Data’s service monitors the locations from which agents access records. When it detects a new location, it moves a copy of the records to a nearby server in order to reduce latency. The service caches the most frequently used files on high-speed storage infrastructure to further reduce access times.

Dropbox said Tigris Data will support its push into the AI infrastructure market. The company debuted its first entry into that product category, DBX Agent Cloud, in conjunction with the acquisition announcement. Like Tigris Data’s service, it’s an S3-compatible object storage offering optimized for AI agents.

The storage stalwart plans to add a file system capability further down the line. Object storage is best suited for unstructured datasets, while file systems are used to store records that are organized into folders. Dropbox plans to release the technology alongside “content processing capabilities.” The company says that those features will make it easier for AI models to process information kept in DBX Agent Cloud.

The offering is rolling out alongside a major overhaul of Dropbox’s flagship file sharing platform. An enhanced search bar will enable users to look for images by entering a description of the file they seek.

Furthermore, Dropbox can now respond to questions about a file by generating a natural language summary. A worker could, for example, request an overview of the changes that colleagues have made to an important folder over the past week.

Dropbox can not only edit questions about files but also edit them. The company says that users can have the built-in AI models change a file’s format, move it to a different folder or combine it with other records into a PDF document. Several other actions are supported as well. Users can mix and match actions into multistep workflows.

The new AI productivity features are initially available to customers in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia with Standard and Advanced subscriptions. Dropbox plans to expand access next year. 

Image: Dropbox