Weeks after launch, Island hits $1.3 billion valuation with $115 million round – TechCrunch

Island, a Dallas-based startup that built a secure browser for the enterprise, raised $115 million in a Series B funding round, valuing the company at $1.3 billion just weeks after emerged from stealth with $100 million in seed funding.

The surprisingly rapid rise was led by former lead investor Insight Partners, and comes just weeks after the New York-based venture capital firm raised more than $20 billion for its twelfth flagship fund.

Island, founded in 2020, has created a security-focused browser for enterprise users based on Chromium. Enterprise Browser disables features such as copy-paste and screen capture to ensure critical data is not exposed outside of an organization and provides secure access to contractors and employees BYOD. It also incorporates a range of built-in security features such as web filtering, web isolation, exploit prevention, intelligent network routing, and zero-trust access.

Island CEO Michael Fey told TechCrunch the investment is the result of demand from “very lucky” customers since its launch in February.

“Our team has been able to secure deals across a multitude of industries and organization sizes. It really meets both the needs of the market and the scalability of the product, and we were very pleased to see that,” Fey said. “This increase with the participation of our original investors illustrates the enthusiasm and extraordinary buy-in they are seeing from customers. This level of funding allows us to scale and innovate to solve more customer problems and we place 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 emerged from stealth. And it’s exciting to see how we’ve already achieved that goal in si not much time.

The mega-rise, backed by existing investors Stripes and Sequoia Capital, also follows a record year of cybersecurity venture capital funding and suggests that trend could continue well into 2022. According to recent data from Momentum Cyber , cybersecurity startups raised a “record” $29.5. billion in venture capital in 2021, more than double the $12 billion raised in 2020 and exceeding the previous two years combined.