

Business Insider files this report under "gossip", but says that it has heard from a pair of second-hand sources that Apple bid up to $800 million for file storage and sharing service Dropbox, but Dropbox passed on the deal to remain independent. The company has since raised a new round of funding at a $4 billion valuation.

Enterprise software-as-a-service company Citrix and Apple took a long look at Dropbox's books. They saw that Dropbox revenues would reach $100 million this year. Apple, we're told, eventually offered $800 million.

Dropbox has been extremely popular with users, offering clients for a host of platforms that allow users to easily access their files via the cloud from nearly anywhere. The service provides 2 GB of free storage for users, with paid upgrades to 50 GB and 100 GB available. The company has also rolled out "Teams" packages to allow groups to take advantage of the storage and sharing functionality with shared quotas and centralized billing.