Aaron Levie‘s Box may have scored a much-needed boost ahead of its planned $250 million stock offering. The cloud-storage company inked an agreement with General Electric to provide online-file-storage services to the industrial giant’s roughly 300,000 employees.
Terms of the agreement haven’t been disclosed. But the deal with GE is significant because it comes just as reports have emerged (first reported by Quartz) that Box may be delaying its highly anticipated IPO. The climate for debut technology stock offerings has gotten less friendly and some potential investors have voiced concerns about Box’s ability to battle rivals including Dropbox and Microsoft.
Box may be hoping that the GE agreement shows that it can quickly grow revenue through major deals to help offset its losses, which in 2013 were $170 million—50% larger than the prior year.
Here’s what GE chief information officer Jamie Miller had to say about the agreement: Now if only the tech IPO markets would cooperate with Box. The technology-laden Nasdaq composite is still about 7% off its peak back in March. We’ve already reported that issuers and their bank underwriters are worried about the softness of the tech market hurting IPOs. That’s an an issue on the minds of companies like Box as they hope to put their best feet forward with prospective investors. Representatives from Box and GE wouldn’t comment on their agreement.