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Box Jumps the Most in Three Years After VC Says to `Go Long'

Box Jumps the Most in Three Years After VC Says to `Go Long'

(Bloomberg) -- Box Inc. shares surged the most in more than three years after a prominent venture capitalist said investors interested in tapping into artificial intelligence plays should “go long” in the stock.

Speaking at the Sohn Conference in New York, Chamath Palihapitiya, chief executive officer of Social Capital, said Box is “incredibly cheap and undervalued.”

Box, a Redwood City, California-based company that helps businesses manage content in the cloud, jumped as much as 16 percent, to $23.95. It was the biggest intraday increase since January 2015. The shares were up 10 percent at 2:20 p.m. in New York.

Palihapitiya said that “if you believe and you care about AI...be long Amazon, be long Google, but frankly, be long Box.”

Last October Box unveiled AI skills that let its file-storage customers use image recognition and text, audio and video-searching tools from companies like Google, Microsoft and IBM.

Ashley Mayer, a partner and head of marketing at Social Capital, previously oversaw communications at Box for six years.

For more coverage of the Sohn Conference, read our TOPLive blog here.

--With assistance from Dina Bass

To contact the reporters on this story: Hema Parmar in New York at hparmar6@bloomberg.net, Kristy Westgard in New York at kwestgard1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Romaine Bostick at rbostick@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Jillian Ward

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