Splashtop, a remote access and support service for businesses, raises $50M led by Sapphire Ventures at a $1B valuation
Context & Ripple Effects
Sapphire Ventures has been running a steady drumbeat of roughly $40–55M checks into business software — ActivTrak's $50M Series B last November, Ujet's $55M Series C before that — all drawing on the $1B late-stage fund it closed back in 2016 with SAP as its sole investor.
Splashtop's $50M round at a $1B valuation extends that pattern into remote access and support tooling, a category pushed to the foreground as businesses kept staff off-site through 2020.
First-order effects
- Splashtop gets growth capital at unicorn-scale pricing without ceding control, giving it ammunition to expand its remote support footprint while demand for off-site access remains elevated.
- Sapphire Ventures adds another late-stage SaaS position to a portfolio that already includes ActivTrak, Ujet, Tetrate, and Salto, deepening its concentration in workforce and infrastructure software.
Second-order effects
- Sapphire's repeated lead role in $40–55M rounds makes it a default first call for late-stage business-software founders, raising the bar for rival growth funds competing on the same deals.
- The SAP-only LP structure means Sapphire's deployment pace is effectively a read on one corporate backer's appetite for enterprise software exposure rather than a broad LP syndicate's.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, remote access and support tools consolidate from point products into core IT infrastructure, with $1B-plus valuations becoming the entry ticket rather than the ceiling for the category.
- A single-LP growth fund shaping a whole portfolio theme around enterprise software points toward more corporate-affiliated capital steering which B2B categories get funded at scale.
The trend: Growth-stage capital is consolidating around a handful of repeat backers like Sapphire Ventures, whose $1B fund is being deployed as a steady cadence of ~$50M bets on business software.