Island Named to the 2024 Forbes Cloud 100

DALLAS (August 13, 2024) – Island, the pioneer and category leader in enterprise browsers, today announced that it has been named to the Forbes 2024 Cloud 100 – the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, published by Forbes in partnership with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures.

Island’s debut on the Forbes 2024 Cloud 100 list comes on the heels of extraordinary growth and achievement for the company. In just over two years, Island’s growing list of global customers already includes a majority of the Fortune 50, including many of the world’s top banks, airlines, hospitality providers, retailers, and many of the biggest names in healthcare and pharma. Island doubled its valuation in less than a year, reaching $3 billion in April 2024 after closing a $175 million Series D funding round led by Coatue Management and Sequoia Capital. In addition to Coatue and Sequoia, Island is backed by world-class VC firms, including Insight Partners, Cyberstarts, Stripes, Cisco Investments, Canapi, Georgian, and Prysm Capital. 

According to Gartner, by 2030 enterprise browsers will be the core platform for delivering workforce productivity and security software on managed and unmanaged devices for a seamless hybrid work experience.* 

The Island Enterprise Browser stands at the forefront of this movement – revolutionizing enterprise security and productivity by integrating essential controls, governance, and productivity features directly into the browser to ensure control, visibility, and data protection without sacrificing the user experience. 

“The Island Enterprise Browser is transforming the work environment for top companies around the world and across industries – boosting productivity and slashing security and IT costs, often to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Island CEO and co-founder Mike Fey. “We’re honored to be recognized by Forbes for our role in solving fundamental, universal challenges for CIOs and CISOs, empowering them to modernize their tech stack in ways that were previously unimaginable.”

For the ninth consecutive year, the Cloud 100 reviews submissions from hundreds of cloud startups and private companies each year. The Cloud 100 evaluation process involved ranking companies across four factors: market leadership (35%), estimated valuation (30%), operating metrics (20%), and people & culture (15%). For market leadership, the Cloud 100 enlists the help of a judging panel of public cloud company CEOs who assist in evaluating and ranking their private company peers.

“For nine years, the Forbes Cloud 100 list has recognized the leading private cloud companies in the world, from AI to work software, infrastructure to security,” said Alex Konrad, the Forbes editor of the Cloud 100. “This year’s list is the strongest group of standouts yet, with revenue, valuations and growth that will eventually make for historic IPOs.”

“Across nine years of data, we have yet to see as competitive of a cohort as the 2024 Cloud 100. The list value reached $820 billion this year, the highest list value in Cloud 100 history,” said Mary D’Onofrio, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Unsurprisingly, AI is now the highest valued category. We continue to be excited by how AI companies are scaling rapidly, transforming the cloud, and propelling the next wave of growth, driving a massive year-over-year jump in market cap of the list of over $150 billion.

"The past year, our industry has seen a generational step forward in innovation, and with AI leading the charge, we are witnessing one of the most important platform shifts in decades," said Paul Drews, managing partner at Salesforce Ventures. "The Cloud 100 list represents the best of the best, and we've never been more excited about what the future holds, not only for the cloud but for the entire technology industry. We are proud of what these founders and their communities have already accomplished, and look forward to seeing how they continue to transform the industry in the future."

The Forbes 2024 Cloud 100 and 20 Rising Stars lists are published online at www.forbes.com/cloud100. Highlights of the list appear in the August/September 2024 issue of Forbes magazine.

This year, the CEOs of The Cloud 100 and the 20 Rising Stars companies will be honored with a digital content launch, as well as at the exclusive Cloud 100 Celebration hosted by Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, and Forbes. A special thank you to the event sponsors, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Bank of America, Cooley, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Nasdaq.

The Island Enterprise Browser

The Island Enterprise Browser is the desktop of the future, enabling organizations to protect users and data, reducing friction where they interact with SaaS and internal web applications. Using the Island Enterprise Browser, security teams fully control the last mile, from basic protections such as copy, paste, download, upload, and screenshot capture, to more advanced security demands such as data redaction, watermarking and multi-factor authentication insertion. This enables a growing number of enterprise use cases, including securing critical SaaS and internal web applications from data leakage, safe access for contractors and BYOD workers, and full governance over privileged user accounts. It also delivers a native user experience for hybrid workers in contrast to costly and poor-performing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), while supporting built-in safe browsing, web filtering, web isolation, exploit prevention, and zero-trust network access at much lower cost.

About Island

Island created the enterprise browser – embedding advanced security, IT and network controls, data protections and application access into the browsing experience users expect. Island is led by enterprise security and software technology veterans who are reimagining the future of work for the world’s largest, most dynamic enterprises. Island is backed by top investors including Coatue Management, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Stripes, Cisco Investments, Georgian, Prysm and Canapi. Island is based in Dallas with research and development in Tel Aviv and can be reached at info@island.io or (866) 832-7114.

About Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 145 IPOs and 300 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer’s global portfolio has included Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr, and Toast and has more than $18 billion of assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Boston, and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer’s storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti-Portfolio). 

About Forbes

Forbes champions success by celebrating those who have made it, and those who aspire to make it. Forbes convenes and curates the most influential leaders and entrepreneurs who are driving change, transforming business and making a significant impact on the world. The Forbes brand today reaches more than 140 million people worldwide through its trusted journalism, signature LIVE and Forbes Virtual events, custom marketing programs and 43 licensed local editions in 69 countries. Forbes Media’s brand extensions include real estate, education and financial services license agreements.

About Salesforce Ventures

Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works. For over 15 years, we’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world’s most tenacious enterprise software companies from seed to IPO, including Airtable, Databricks, DocuSign, Guild Education, Hopin, monday.com, nCino, Snowflake, Snyk, Stripe, Tanium, and Zoom. We leverage our decades of expertise in the cloud and our long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give our portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth. Salesforce Ventures has a $5BN portfolio of 300+ companies in more than 25 countries, and has offices worldwide, including in San Francisco, Irvine, New York, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. Follow @SalesforceVC and learn more at http://www.salesforceventures.com.

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Contacts

Andy Shane

ashane@bigvalley.co 

Big Valley Marketing for Island

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Amie Rubenstein

Bessemer Venture Partners

press@bvp.com   

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*1 Source: Gartner, Emerging Tech: Security — The Future of Enterprise Browsers, Dan Ayoub, Evgeny Mirolyubov, Max Taggett, Dave Messett, 14 April 2023

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