Sutter Hill Ventures is an American

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

firm focused on

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

investments in technology-based start-up companies. Founded in 1964, Sutter Hill is one of the oldest venture capital firms still in operation. Based in

Palo Alto, CA Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

, the firm is primarily focused on investments in the fields of networking and computer technology, business and financial services, healthcare, web development, and pop culture, and have been known to invest in angel funds.

History

Sutter Hill Ventures was founded in 1964 by Bill Draper and Paul Wythes. It began as an off-shoot of a real estate firm and was licensed as a Small Business Investment Company. The firm was an early investor in companies including Qume, a maker of disk drives and printers acquired in 1978 by ITT, and Diablo Systems, a pioneer of daisy-wheel printers that was acquired by

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

in 1972. In the 1980s, the firm provided seed money for

LSI Logic LSI Logic Corporation was an American company founded in Santa Clara, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data ...

and Banyan Systems. In May 2025, it was reported the company invested in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

hardware start-up called io, founded in 2024 by

Jony Ive Sir Jonathan Paul Ive (born 27 February 1967) is a British-American designer. He is best known for his work at Apple Inc., where he was senior vice president of industrial design and chief design officer. Ive is the founder of LoveFrom, a crea ...

, and then acquired by

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

for $6.5 billion, subject to regulatory approval.

Notable Investments

The firm has held positions in a number of publicly traded companies, including Restoration Robotics (HAIR),

Pure Storage Pure Storage, Inc. is an American publicly traded technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States. It develops all-flash data storage hardware and software products. Pure Storage was founded in 2009 and developed its ...

(PSTG), Mattersight (MATR), Forty Seven (FTSV), Threshold Pharmaceuticals (THLD), Molecular Templates (MTEM),

Cardica Gardiki (Greek language, Greek: Γαρδίκη) is a village and a Municipalities and communities of Greece, community in the Trikala (regional unit), Trikala regional unit of Greece's Thessaly region. It is part of the municipal unit of Aithikes ...

(CRDC), and Corcept Therapeutics (CORT). The firm has also incubated and invested in

Snowflake Computing Snowflake Inc. is an American cloud-based data storage company. Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, it operates a platform that allows for data analysis and simultaneous access of data sets with minimal latency. It operates on Amazon Web Se ...

(SNOW) which had the record-setting technology

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in 2020.

References

External links

* Financial services companies established in 1964 Companies based in Palo Alto, California Private equity firms of the United States 1964 establishments in California Venture capital firms of the United States {{private-equity-company-stub