Updated: Cloud storage provider Box.net raising $35M at $550M valuation

Cloud storage provider Box.net has raised $19 million of a $35 million extension to its fourth round of funding, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Box.net chief executive Aaron Levie confirmed the round to VentureBeat.

“God bless the SEC and their rules on transparency, we’re haven’t quite completed anything on our end,” he said. “It’s effectively a two-part round.”

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":320796,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,entrepreneur,mobile,","session":"B"}']

The round currently includes existing investors like Andreessen-Horowitz and Draper Fisher Jurveston, Levie said. There are additional investors that the company would not disclose yet, but would disclose in a few weeks. The company plans to use the funding to build up its team in a mad land grab for the cloud computing ecosystem, Levie said.

“As you’ve gotten a sense in the past 7 or 8 months, the market is in nearly every variable and metric outperforming our expectations,” he said. “The market for cloud adoption, our ability to hire great people and our own expectation has been above what we even anticipated a couple quarters ago.”

Box.net is planning a second extension to its fourth round of funding on top of the money it has raised thus far. It will either be part of the current extension to its fourth round (a series D-1 round) or  a separate extension (a series D-2 round).

The company previously rased $48 million in its most recent round of funding led by Emergence Capital in February. The company also recently opened a new office and began moving over there in June after rapidly expanding its team.

The funding authorized 4.8 million shares of series D-1 preferred stock sold at $8.03 per share, putting the company’s valuation at around $550 million, venture capital data provider VC Experts Lead Business Intelligence Analyst Justin Byers told VentureBeat.

Box.net currently has 6 million users. Some 60,000 businesses employ its cloud-storage software, including 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies. That figure is up from around 66 percent in February.