Aug 25, 2026 earnings call — Enterprise AI adoption and security focus
Box raised full-year revenue by $10 million to approximately $1.29 billion, representing 10% year-over-year growth.
Revenue $0.3B (est $0.3B) · EPS $0.40 (est $0.40)
Key quotes
"Box delivered exceptional second quarter results, continuing the strong momentum we saw in Q1 and led by the rapid customer adoption of Enterprise Advanced."
"As external AI agents interact with enterprise data, Box is implementing robust guardrails, comprehensive audit logs and real-time security alerts to ensure that content remains protected, governed and visible at all times."
"We are also expanding our FDE or Forward Deployed Engineering efforts to ensure that customers can successfully implement and tune AI agents on their enterprise content for everything from document processing to agentic content workflows."
Analyst Q&A 7
token costs and legacy data migrations
Q (Lucky Schreiner · D.A. Davidson): Analyst asked how token costs may change and how OpenSource model adoption affects long agentic workflows, plus any internal unit economics difference between frontier and OpenSource models. He also asked how Box speeds up long legacy migrations and how strong customer demand is for modernization.
A: Management said a model-neutral layer (their agentic harness) lets Box send work to the cheapest model that meets the customer's accuracy needs, including open weight models when appropriate. They said price competition (OpenAI, Gemini) lowers costs or increases consumption, and that many customers must move legacy unstructured data into cloud systems so agents can read and act on it. Box plans product launches and updates to accelerate migrations and support agentic workflows securely.
"So by having a model neutral layer, which is our agentic harness, we can then make sure that we are directing the workload to whatever is the effectively cheapest model at the accuracy level that the customer is looking for." — Aaron Levie (CEO)
security and governance for AI agents
Q (George Michael Kurosawa · Citi): Analyst asked what is new or different about governance and security needs for AI agents versus human users and how Box's role has evolved. He also asked Dylan to explain gross margin drivers around AI usage and public cloud capacity.
A: Management said agents need the same access controls as humans but also new guardrails: alerting, anomaly detection, tighter identity and controls, and limits on what agents can read, write or download. They said Box will build more Shield features and integrate with the security ecosystem. Dylan said the two biggest gross margin drivers are adoption of Box's platform/Box AI and capacity constraints at public cloud providers; as those constraints ease, infrastructure efficiency projects will unlock.
"But what's interesting is, over time, they're actually going to need additional protections that we didn't commonly think that end users needed." — Aaron Levie (CEO)
company-wide (wall-to-wall) Box adoption
Q (BofA): Analyst asked how AI agent governance is driving customers to adopt Box across the whole company instead of just in a single department. He wanted to know the benefit of wall-to-wall deployment.
A: Management said wall-to-wall wins reduce the many-to-many problem of multiple agents and multiple data systems by creating a single source of truth for corporate knowledge, which helps security, governance and productivity. They noted Enterprise Advanced features (retention, records) support this and that the capability often drives seat expansion across departments, which raises net retention.
"That's the kind of like knowledge worker end-user productivity benefit." — Aaron Levie (CEO)
zero data retention and FDE consulting
Q (Christopher Quintero · Morgan Stanley): Analyst asked how Box thinks about zero data retention (ZDR) as an enabler for enterprise AI adoption and what opportunity that creates for Box. He also asked for key learnings from scaling the FDE motion.
A: Management said ZDR was a major reason enterprises became comfortable using AI and that Box requires GA models to meet ZDR and compliance criteria, regions and hosting needs to earn enterprise trust. On FDE, Box said the motion began with hands-on work by consulting and solutions engineers, is being programmatized and scaled, and will remain an investment area to help customers tune models and agents on their documents.
"And that's the enterprise trust that we've been able to establish with organizations as we deliver AI to them." — Aaron Levie (CEO)
consumption trends and customer expansion
Q (Johnathan McCary · Raymond James Company): Analyst asked whether customers are refilling consumption credits before renewal and whether AI feature adoption is mainly from existing customers or driving material net-new wins.
A: Management said consumption starts from a lower base but is growing rapidly year-over-year and much of the early consumption is from existing customers. They said those consumption activities often lead to materially bigger upsells within existing accounts, changing conversations and prompting more FDE work, verticalization and system integrator engagement.
"A lot of it is the customer still doing their initial big kind of growth workloads just because the -- we're still relatively early in the AI unit monetization." — Aaron Levie (CEO)
international deals and AI conversations
Q (Joshua Trautman · RBC): Analyst asked how international deals have participated in product adoption, retention and how conversations with international clients are developing.
A: Management said the quarter was broad-based with strong wins in Japan, EMEA and the U.S. They said conversations in all regions have similar contours focused on how to transform enterprise content with AI agents and that there is strong enthusiasm, for example in Japan.
"All of which very similar contours of conversation around how do you transform with AI agents." — Aaron Levie (CEO)
billings seasonality and growth vs revenue
Q (Jason Ader · William Blair): Analyst asked why billings guided down to 8% for Q3 after strong Q2 billings and whether billings growth should lead revenue growth given current momentum.
A: Management said billings are lumpy with many moving pieces, including FX and difficult comps quarter-to-quarter, which can cause quarter variability. They noted they have raised full-year billings expectations by more than $20 million since initial guidance, expect billings to lead revenue on a constant currency basis, and that short-term RPO is already a few points ahead of those metrics.
"So a lot of moving pieces in there and billings is inherently lumpy." — Dylan Smith (CFO)