Island, a Texas startup selling an enterprise web browser based on Chromium, has attracted $100 million in new financing and investors continue to bet big on the secure browser category.
The company said the investment was led by Prysm Capital at a valuation of $1.5 billion. Existing backers Canapi Ventures, Insight Partners, Stripes, Sequoia, Cyberstarts and Georgian also expanded equity positions.
Island has raised a total of $325 million since launching in 2020 with ambitious plans to build and sell a specialized browser to protect users and data flowing through SaaS and internal web applications.
The Chrome-based product promises protections against data exfiltration (including data copy, transfer, and screenshot capture), along with more advanced capabilities, such as multi-factor authentication insertion and smart network routing.
Island’s massive $100 million Series C comes less than two months after tech giant Microsoft announced its own entry in the space with the release of a product promising a native browsing experience tightly integrated with enterprise-grade security and manageability features.
Microsoft’s strategic play, automatically rolled out to billions of Microsoft customers signing in with Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), natively separates work and personal browsing into dedicated browser windows with their own favorites, separate caches and storage locations.
In addition to Island, several startups have attracted major funding for technology providing secure browsing to businesses. Talon Cyber Security has raised $143 million to build a security-centric browser based on Chromium while investors have poured cash into companies like SlashNext, LayerX, Seraphic and Red Access.
In a note accompanying the new $100 million funding, Island said it has sold 2 million browsers to customers in all major verticals and segments and has multiple customers ranking in the top 20 of the Fortune 100.
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Related: Enterprise Browser Startup Island Snags Massive Funding Round
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