About Splashtop

We're the leader in Secure Remote Access and Support. We deliver an in-person experience users need with security IT can trust.

What is an in-person experience? Unlike clunky remote access solutions, our products are as fast, simple and secure as being right in front of your on-site work computer, yet you can be anywhere, on any device. Our solutions provide high performance with 4K quality at 60fps; advanced security features and compliance; one application for access and support across operating systems, including Windows and Mac; and global support with direct access to an expert.

The company now known as Splashtop was founded in 2006. However, the Splashtop story began more than 15 years earlier. That was when the company's four founders—Mark Lee, Robert Ha, Thomas Deng and Philip Sheu—met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as undergraduate electrical engineering and computer science students.

The four were born in Taiwan and grew up in California in Taiwanese immigrant families. They formed a tight-knit group that embraced the MIT credo of “work hard and play hard.”

Mark, in particular, always had an entrepreneurial streak. MIT promoted entrepreneurship, and Mark persuaded the others to join him in entering a business plan in what was then a $10,000 entrepreneurship competition (it’s now a $100,000 competition). Their business plan was a finalist.

The four followed different career paths after leaving MIT. Mark worked for Intel in Arizona and California; Thomas worked for Motorola in Florida and for Intel in California; Phil worked for HP in California and Oregon; and Robert went to New York to work on Wall Street. But the group stayed in touch and talked often about starting a company together.

In 2000, the co-founders formed OSA Technologies. This organization made embedded intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) software and firmware.

OSA raised a total of $20 million from Intel, Dell, Quanta, Foxconn, UMC, Storm Ventures, Sycamore Ventures and others. With operations in San Jose, Shanghai and Taipei, OSA shipped its products to server vendors that included Microsoft, Intel, Dell, HP and IBM. In 2004, OSA was acquired by Avocent for $100 million.

The four founders took positions at Avocent for a couple of years. In 2006, they decided to start another company together. Originally named DeviceVM, the company was later renamed after its first product name: Splashtop.

With the goal of delivering a faster, simpler internet user experience, DeviceVM launched the first instant-on browser operating system (OS), which was adopted by Asus, Acer, HP, Dell, Lenovo, LG, Sony and others. The browser OS shipped on more than 300 million PCs across all major PC and netbook platforms. It was a precursor to Google Chromebooks. The DeviceVM instant-on browser OS won the “Best of CES” award in 2009.

By 2010, the company recognized that PCs were losing ground as a primary computing platform, meaning their market direction would not be sustainable or scalable in the future. Instead, they forged a new direction of leveraging their core expertise in delivering high-performance software products that improved people’s computing experience.

We focused our newly directed efforts first on remote mobile gaming and then on more generalized remote computer and remote support. Since then, we've grown into a worldwide leader in enabling easy, secure and high-performance access to the computing resources needed for work, learning, play and IT support—anywhere, anytime, from any device.

The team that manages Splashtop today is the same one that founded the company in 2006. And they’re all still friends. One of their long-time investors pointed to the group’s grit and resilience as one of the ‘superpowers’ behind Splashtop’s success. The founders’ shared history and values are largely responsible for Splashtop’s culture of family-like camaraderie, transparency and passionate commitment to delighting its customers.

Between 2006 and 2010, Splashtop raised a total of $49 million in venture capital funding in four rounds, from investors that included Storm Ventures, DFJ DragonFund, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Sapphire Ventures. In January 2021, the company announced a new $50+ million investment—led by Sapphire Ventures and including the other three long-time investors—that pushed its valuation beyond the $1 billion ‘unicorn’ mark.