Enterprise browser security company Island has announced the completion of a $250 million financing round at a valuation of $5 billion.
The company was founded by former Symantec CEO Mike Fey and Israeli serial entrepreneur Dan Amiga.
The financing round was led by previous investor Coatue, one of the most active companies investing in Israeli growth companies in recent years.
As far as is known the financing round did not include the secondary sale of shares by the entrepreneurs and Coatue and other existing investors are injecting money into the company to allow Island to continue growing.
According to PitchBook, the company has been raising over $100 million every year at a rising company valuation. Island's most recent financing round was last April when it raised $175 million at a valuation of $3 billion.
The latest round brings the total amount raised by the company to $730 million from investors including Sequoia, Insight Partners, and Gili Raanan's Cyberstarts.
Despite the buzz created by last week's announcement that Google will acquire Israeli cloud security company Wiz, Islan's current fundraising was completed well before the acquisition.
At the same time, the company shares a lot of common DNA with Wiz. Island's founders Amiga and Fey are limited partners (LPs) in the Cyberstarts fund, the first investor in Wiz, and as such, could earn tens of millions of dollars from the sale.
Island's background as a company
Island began its activities by selling a secure browser to large companies, and over time expanded it to other uses in order to encourage company employees to work from its browser rather than Google's Chrome browser or Microsoft's Edge.
Island has developed a communications technology that enables fast remote connection to corporate computers as well as internal corporate communications applications, and is seeking to expand the scope to other areas with the aim of keeping employees on their browsers as much as possible and bringing corporate customers to increase their browser usage.
Additional companies in the field have been established in the Israeli market: Talon, which developed browser security technology and was sold to Palo Alto Networks for $625 million; and Guardio, which also developed its own browser.
The company jealously guards its client names, but it is said to serve aviation, retail, technology and entertainment giants, and is estimated to currently generate annual revenue in the tens of millions of dollars.
The company employs 450 people, 200 of whom are based at its development center on Hamered Street in Tel Aviv while the remainder is in company headquarters in Dallas, Texas.
