US-based cloud collaboration platform Box has established a $40m fund aimed at startups developing services based on Box’s platform, chief executive Aaron Levie announced on Wednesday.
Venture capital firms Bessemer Venture Partners and Emergence Capital Partners are also participating in the fund, though it has not been disclosed how much of the capital they will contribute. Levie revealed the fund at Box’s BoxDev event in San Francisco.
Box hopes the fund will have a direct, positive influence on its market share as more funding will foster more applications, which in turn will attract more customers to its platform.
The company operates a cloud-based storage and collaboration service that lets other startups build products on top of its platform. It is aimed primarily at enterprise users, differentiating itself from competing services Dropbox, Microsoft’s OneDrive and Google Drive, which also target private individuals.
Box celebrated a $175m initial public offering in January this year that valued it at $1.67bn. Its share price currently stands at $18.28, 30% higher than its flotation price of $14.00.
Prior to floating, it raised approximately $595m from investors including chip maker Intel, software producers SAP and Salesforce, conglomerates Mitsui and Itochu, electronics manufacturer Macnica, and telecommunication companies Telstra and Telefónica.