Drew Houston: Dropbox Co-Founder and Co-CEO Profile

Drew Houston is the co-founder and co-chief executive of Dropbox, the San Francisco cloud storage and work software company he started in 2007. He led it alone as chief executive for 19 years before sharing the post in May 2026.

His next step is already set. Dropbox said Houston will serve as co-CEO with Ashraf Alkarmi through a transition period and then move to executive chairman, with Alkarmi as sole chief executive. Houston has said he plans to build something new in artificial intelligence.

Education

Houston holds an SB in computer science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated in 2005, according to MIT News.

While still a student he founded Accolade, an online SAT preparation startup. It was also at MIT that he met Arash Ferdowsi, then an undergraduate, who became his Dropbox co-founder.

Houston returned to MIT in June 2013 as the speaker at its 147th Commencement in Killian Court. In the address he described his first startup, Accolade, which set out to build a new kind of online course for the SAT.

Career

After graduating, Houston saw a need for a way to carry files between computers without email attachments or USB drives, MIT News reported. He began writing a solution in 2007 and shared an early version with Ferdowsi.

In a 2026 interview with CNBC, he traced the idea to a “personal frustration” with losing USB sticks during his MIT years. In his 2013 MIT speech he recalled the moment the company raised its first 1.2 million dollars, and the weight of knowing investors would want it back. The two co-founders went through the Y Combinator startup program and built the product into a company.

Dropbox grew quickly as a simple folder that kept files in sync across devices. It passed 1 billion dollars in annual revenue in 2017 and topped 2 billion dollars four years later, CNBC reported.

Competition grew as Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft built their own storage services, and Box remained a long-time rival. CNBC put Dropbox’s market value at just over 6 billion dollars in May 2026, about half the high reached on its first day of trading in 2018.

On 23 March 2018 Houston and Ferdowsi rang the opening bell at Nasdaq as Dropbox shares began trading. CNBC noted that Houston became the first founder to take a company from Y Combinator all the way to the public market.

In February 2020 he joined the board of Facebook, now Meta Platforms. Mark Zuckerberg said at the time that Houston brought “valuable perspective” as the leader of a technology company with services used by millions of people and businesses. Our profile of Mark Zuckerberg covers Meta’s founder.

In recent years Houston has pushed Dropbox toward AI. Its Dash product lets customers search and work with documents, messages, video and audio across many apps, and he told CNBC that advances in AI models meant Dropbox could build the version of this he wanted a decade earlier.

On 21 May 2026 the board appointed Ashraf Alkarmi, the general manager of the core business, as co-CEO from 26 May 2026. Houston, who also chairs the board, said in a note to staff that the business was in a stronger position than it had been in years.

The same week Dropbox said Mike Torres, vice president of product for Google’s Chrome, would join as chief product officer in July 2026. Other recent hires include Ross Tennenbaum as chief financial officer from December 2025 and Boon Lai as chief marketing officer from May 2026.

Houston told CNBC there was no single reason for the timing. He said he trusted the new leader and that the company was “in the right place.”

Current Roles

Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer, Dropbox (co-CEO since May 2026; CEO from 2007)
Chairman of the Board, Dropbox; expected to become Executive Chairman after the transition
Member of the Board of Directors, Meta Platforms (since 2020)

Key Achievements

Building a household name in file sync

Dropbox took a single idea, a folder that stays the same on every device, and turned it into a service used by hundreds of millions of people. The company reports more than 700 million registered users around the world.

A Y Combinator first

Dropbox’s 2018 listing made it the first company from the Y Combinator program to reach the public market with its founder in charge, according to CNBC.

Revenue past 2 billion dollars

Under Houston, Dropbox went from a startup to a company with billions in yearly sales and strong cash flow.

Above 1 billion dollars in revenue: 2017
Above 2 billion dollars in revenue: 2021
Revenue in fiscal 2025: 2.521 billion dollars
Unlevered free cash flow in fiscal 2025: 1.016 billion dollars
Non-GAAP operating margin in fiscal 2025: 40.6 percent

In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, Dropbox bought back about 14.4 million of its own shares for 414.6 million dollars.

The move to AI tools

Houston made Dash the centre of the company’s plans. In February 2026 he said Dropbox was “accelerating Dash,” both as a standalone product and inside the core Dropbox experience. He added that in 2026 the company would focus on engagement and adoption of Dash and on investing in future growth.