REPORT: Box Has Secretly Filed For An IPO

The stock market brouhaha around cloud-based storage and collaboration is about to begin: Mark DeCambre at Quartz is reporting that Box has secretly filed for its initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to Quartz's sources, the company has reached out to Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and JP Morgan Chase to help underwrite its stock offering.

With a valuation of $1 billion as of 2012, DeCambre states that Box may be looking to raise as much as $500 million from its IPO.

Like Twitter last fall, Box is reportedly using a provision from the 2012 JOBS Act that allows "emerging growth" companies (companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue) to wait until just 21 days before their "roadshow" for investors to begin publicly releasing financials.

We've reached out to Box for comment, and will update this post if we hear back.