Island — Startup Profile

The company that created the enterprise browser category — now pitching an agentic control plane for AI-era work

HQ: Dallas, Texas, USA (R&D led from Tel Aviv; London office) | Founded: 2020 | Employees: 1,000 (company, Sept 2026); ~500 at Series E (Mar 2025); LinkedIn lists 501–1,000 | Stage: Series F (Private) | Website: https://island.io

About

Island was founded in 2020 and stayed in stealth ~18 months before unveiling what it called the world's first Enterprise Browser in February 2022. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with R&D led from Tel Aviv and a London office. Co-founder and CEO Mike Fey was previously Symantec's president and COO and a GM/CTO at McAfee; co-founder and CTO Dan Amiga founded Fireglass, a browser-isolation pioneer Symantec acquired in 2017, and is a veteran of Israel's 8200 unit.

The product is a Chromium-based browser with enterprise controls in-session rather than bolted on via proxies, agents or virtual desktops. Security teams govern last-mile actions — copy, paste, download, upload, screenshots, watermarking, redaction — insert MFA, hold corporate credentials and enforce zero-trust access to SaaS and internal apps. Island has used the browser as a wedge into adjacent spend: contractor and BYOD access, M&A onboarding, privileged access management, VDI replacement, a password manager (2023), mobile clients (2022), an extension for consumer browsers, a rebuilt SASE stack (Enterprise Network, 2026) and an Enterprise AI layer for governing AI agents and AI-built apps.

Island reported 450+ enterprise customers as of March 2025, ARR doubling every fiscal year since launch, and roughly $730M raised through Series E; a $400M Series F in September 2026 led by Evolution Equity Partners took valuation to $6.4B and headcount near 1,000. Customers span financial services, government/defense, healthcare, higher education, manufacturing, retail and BPOs; named references include Pfizer, TaskUs, Swiss Life and The Bank of Marion. Island holds SOC 2 Type 2, is FedRAMP In Process toward FedRAMP High, and was the only 2026 Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice vendor for Secure Enterprise Browsers.

The Take

Island's bet is architectural: security and IT control should live inside the browser session, because that is where SaaS, web apps and now AI agents actually execute. Mike Fey — previously Symantec's president and COO — and Dan Amiga — who founded Fireglass and sold it to Symantec in 2017 — spent about 18 months in stealth building a Chromium fork with enterprise controls embedded at the point of data interaction: clipboard, download, screenshot, watermarking, credential custody, web isolation and zero-trust access. Coming out in February 2022, they named the category 'Enterprise Browser' and have led it since, with 450 customers by March 2025.

The commercial trajectory is unusually clean for a new category: a $1.3B valuation within weeks of launch, $1.5B in late 2023, $3B in 2024, $4.8B in 2025, and $6.4B after a $400M Series F led by Evolution Equity Partners in September 2026. Island says ARR has doubled every fiscal year since the 2022 launch and now employs 1,000 people. It has also stopped being just a browser: an extension for consumer browsers, a rebuilt SASE stack (Enterprise Network) and an AI-governance layer (Enterprise AI) now sit under one 'agentic control plane' pitch aimed at the same CIO/CISO buying center.

The risk is that platform vendors treat browser control as a feature rather than a market. Palo Alto Networks bought Talon for $625M and offers it free to qualified SASE customers; CrowdStrike agreed to acquire Seraphic in January 2026 on an explicit 'secure any browser, no replacement' thesis; Google and Microsoft ship browser management free or nearly free. Island's counter is depth (a full workspace, not an overlay), displacement economics (retiring VDI, VPN, DLP and ZTNA line items) and regulated-industry trust, including FedRAMP In Process. If buyers decide a Chrome extension plus a SASE bundle is good enough, the stand-alone workspace faces bundling pressure it cannot beat on price alone.

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