Mobile App Testing Startup Sauce Labs Raises $5M

Cloud-based app-testing service Sauce Labs closed $5 million in Series C funding today, led by Toba Capital, with angel investor Scott Banister and previous investor Triage Ventures participating. This brings Sauce Labs’ total funding to about $9 million since its first round of funding in 2009.

In August 2012, Sauce Labs raised $3 million in a Series B round and released its mobile web application testing cloud for Mac OS X, iOS and Android devices. Users can also test apps on major web browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome.

The app-testing space has seen several newcomers, including Appurify, Little Eye Labs and Cisimple, all of which launched in 2012. To remain competitive, Sauce Labs has added a new management console called Sauce Team, which adds tools for team collaboration and improved insight to find bugs while testing applications.

CEO John Dunham says this addition is “a 1.0 initiation of our whole thrust into providing better visibility in the enterprise features.” Dunham tells TechCrunch that the company is working to allow teams to evaluate their results against other users on Sauce Labs.

The new round of funding will also go to implementing the use of physical devices with mobile simulator capabilities, which Dunham says will be available later this year. He also plans to increase the company sales organization, after seeing a record 6 million tests in June and a total of 50 million tests since its launch.