Island, a Dallas-based startup that built a secure browser for the enterprise, has raised $115 million in a Series B round, valuing the company at $1.3 billion just weeks after emerging from stealth with $100 million in initial funding.
The astonishingly fast raise was led by previous lead investor Insight Partners, and comes just weeks after the New York-based venture capital firm raised over $20 billion for its 12th flagship fund.
Island, founded in 2020, created a security-focused browser for enterprise users based on Chromium. The enterprise browser disables functions such as copy and paste and screen-shotting to ensure critical data isn’t exposed outside of an organization and provides secure access for contractors and BYOD workers. It also bakes in a range of built-in security features like web filtering, web isolation, exploit prevention, smart network routing and zero-trust access.
Island CEO Michael Fey tells TechCrunch that the investment is a result of “very fortunate” customer demand since it launched in February.
“Our team has been able to secure business across a wealth of sectors and organization sizes. It really speaks to both the need in the market and the scalability of the product, and we’ve been very gratified to see that,” said Fey. “This raise with the participation of our original investors illustrates the enthusiasm and extraordinary uptake they see from customers. This level of funding allows us to scale and innovate to solve more customer challenges and puts us in the best position to lead the category.”
“Our mission with the launch of the Enterprise Browser was to deliver value to security professionals from the moment we came out of stealth. And it’s been exciting to see how we’ve already delivered on that goal in such a short time.”
The mega-raise, backed by existing investors Stripes and Sequoia Capital, also follows a record year of cybersecurity VC funding and suggests this trend could continue into 2022. According to recent data from Momentum Cyber, cybersecurity startups raised a “record-shattering” $29.5 billion in venture capital in 2021, more than doubling the $12 billion raised in 2020 and outpacing the two previous years combined.
