Sauce Labs secures $50 million to help app developers test their apps across browsers, operating systems and devices

Sauce Labs, a cloud-based testing startup that ensures your favorite mobile apps and websites work flawlessly on every browser, operating system, and device, has secured a $50 million growth investment from Riverwood Capital to drive strategic growth and fuel efforts to evolve portfolio beyond functional testing. In conjunction with the funding, the startup also announced that Jeff Parks from Riverwood Capital will be joining its Board of Directors.

Founded in 2008 by Al Sargent, Jason Huggins, John Dunham, and Steven Hazel, Sauce Labs provides cloud-based testing for mobile and web applications. It offers Sauce Headless, a testing solution that provides cloud-based headless browser testing on containers. Sauce Labs provides automated browser, selenium, JS unit, automated mobile, manual testing, and platform testing services. With headquarters in San Francisco California, Sauce also has a data center in Frankfurt in Germany. Sauce Labs is a privately held company funded by Toba Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Centerview Capital Technology, IVP, Adams Street Partners and Riverwood Capital

Already the industry leader with more than 2 million tests per day running on its award-winning Continuous Testing Cloud platform, Sauce Labs will leverage this investment to further accelerate core business growth and evolve its portfolio beyond functional testing, giving customers a 360-degree view of the application experience they deliver to users. The company plans to accelerate its investment in research and development, as well as aggressively pursue strategic growth opportunities.

“As leading digital brands increasingly emphasize rapid delivery of flawless web and mobile applications, the global continuous testing market continues to grow and evolve,” said Charles Ramsey, CEO, Sauce Labs. “With this new round of funding from Riverwood, Sauce Labs is well positioned to continue its rapid growth. We look forward to expanding our solution set, delivering innovations that define the future of continuous testing, and accelerating our customers’ digital journeys.”

The investment comes at a time when digital transformation is driving a massive shift to DevOps-oriented, agile development processes. According to IDC, the DevOps software market is forecast to reach $8 billion by 2022, with an approximate CAGR of 15.7 percent. As organizations undergo this fundamental change to the way they build and deliver applications, continuous testing has emerged as the lynchpin of the modern software delivery lifecycle. According to Forrester, 68 percent of agile teams now include testers, and quality has become by far the most important success metric that dev teams use.

This broader market growth mirrors that of Sauce Labs, which surpassed the 2 billion test milestone and achieved record total annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2018, bolstered by a nearly 40 percent year-over-year increase, its fourth consecutive year of double-digit ARR growth. In 2018, Sauce Labs was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000, Deloitte Technology Fast 500, and San Francisco Business Times’ Top 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies lists for the third, fourth and fifth consecutive years, respectively.

“From day one, we were impressed by Sauce Labs’ history of market leadership, its commitment to engineering excellence, the passion of its employees and the loyalty of its customers,” said Jeff Parks, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Riverwood Capital. “We envision a day in the not-too-distant future in which every company in the world invests heavily in continuous testing, and we’re thrilled to partner with Charles and his world-class management team to help take Sauce Labs and its customers to new heights.”