theCUBEd Awards | Michael Fey, Island (HyperCUBEd Innovation Award - Startup)

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Michael Fey

Co-Founder & CEO

Island

play_circle_outline Island's recent award and $250 million funding round

play_circle_outline Island's mission to transform web browsers into secure workspaces

play_circle_outline Simplifying security policies and improving productivity for enterprises

play_circle_outline Rapid customer adoption and expansion

play_circle_outline Enterprise browser as part of next version of zero trust

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Michael Fey, Island (HyperCUBEd Innovation Award - Startup)

Michael Fey

Co-Founder & CEO Island

Michael Fey, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Island, marks significant milestones, most recently at the Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards 2025, with Island receiving the HyperCUBEd Innovation Award. This accolade coincides with the company celebrating a successful $250 million Series E funding round, setting its valuation at nearly $5 billion.

In this exclusive video, Dave Vellante of SiliconANGLE Media hosts a conversation with Fey about Island's rapid advances in the cybersecurity sector. The discussion highlights how Island's enterprise browser... Read more

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What award did Island win at the Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards 2025? add

What problem did Michael set out to solve with Island's missions to transform everyday web browsers into enterprise-ready workspaces and how did he make the browser more secure for businesses? add

What was the motivation behind reimagining the consumer browser for enterprise use and how has it benefited various industries? add

What is the CEO's vision for Ireland over the next five years and how do they see the enterprise browser category and concept evolving? Will it become a standard part of the cybersecurity stack? add

What is the next version of zero trust being referred to in the text? add

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Michael Fey, Island (HyperCUBEd Innovation Award - Startup)

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Dave Vellante

>> Hello everybody, and welcome. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Michael Fey, the co-founder and CEO of Island, which is a fast rising cybersecurity company behind the enterprise browser platform. Michael's fresh off a big win, Island was just honored at the Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards 2025 with the HyperCUBEd Innovation Award and the startup category. First off, Michael, good to see you. Congratulations on this award. Really appreciate you coming on.

Michael Fey

>> Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Dave Vellante

>> So let me just give some background. The CUBEd's panel of experts, I think we had 40 judges recognized Island for, "Redefining how enterprises secure work and proving that an enterprise browser can actually be a powerful application delivery platform that makes work more secure, simpler to access, builds trust, makes people more productive." So we're really excited to dive into what that means and why Island's work is turning heads in the cybersecurity world. But as well, Michael, this recognition comes in the heels of another major milestone for Island, a $250 million Series E funding round, which was just recently announced. It was led by Coatue Management with participation from top tier backers. I think Sequoia was in there, the venerable insight partners. So it puts you, I believe in a valuation of nearly $5 billion.

Michael Fey

>> That is correct.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. So pretty impressive vote of confidence. In a press release, you mentioned that this new funding is going to help you scale your product development and your talent acquisition to meet the demands of enterprises, the changing IT needs. So your vision is resonating with investors. I did a sit down with Nikesh Arora recently. He was very happy about the acquisition they made pointing to Island. So you're getting the attention of top name CEOs. What are your thoughts on that?

Michael Fey

>> Well, one, we're honored to have won the award, so that's great. We really appreciate that. Our team does strive to be innovative. We do think what we're doing is game changing and the round was an affirmation of that. When we were approached with that large an evaluation, it was not a scheduled round, it was a preemptive round. It opened up the opportunity to press this process yet faster and continue going on a global path quicker. So we've expanded our reach, we've expanded our go-to-market reach and now we're growing that R&D org and it feels almost limitless, the areas we can add value from this platform. So the bigger the R&D org, the more value we can give the customers. So it's a wonderful thing and we're proud of both accomplishments.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. So those folks that might not be familiar with Island says it's missions to transform everyday web browser into enterprise ready workspace. Michael's own words, I pulled this from SiliconANGLE, "The enterprise browser upgrades web browsers from a dedicated consumer software package to an enterprise-ready solution, one that improves productivity, simplifies the IT stack, reduces complexity and embeds security directly into the user's browsing experience." Michael, I wonder if you could just explain that in more detail, the problem that you set out to solve and how you've made that browser more secure for businesses.

Michael Fey

>> Sure. So if we think about the consumer browser, what a wonderful application. We've all used it for the last 30 years and because it's dedicated for consumers, it does a lot of wonderful things for us when we're shopping, when we're doing personal research, when we're gathering information, that's all wonderful. But we bring it into the enterprise, we have to bolt on so many security controls and productivity controls and access controls and you have data management and the list goes on and on and on. You started to see that the bifurcation of the needs of the consumer and the needs of the enterprise are really stressing the overall tech environment. So we set out to do was to reimagine how the browser works, we stood on top of the open source project called Chromium, which is behind the great browsers like Chrome and Edge and Opera and Brave and all those. And we took that open source project and re-imagined it for three constituencies. Instead of the consumer, the shopper, the advertising need. We said, "All right. What about the knowledge worker at work? What about the IT staff that has to support them? And what about cybersecurity?" And we went around and we built into the browser solutions to push forward all of those agendas. So this is a platform that's fully managed by an enterprise that can deliver a Island of safety, an Island of security and productivity on a device they don't even own, regardless of form factor. And all it takes is a simple push of a link, opposed to shipping hardware, standing up, VPNs, backhauling traffic, standing up sassy infrastructures, just the mountain of tech debt that gets built by that demand starts to flow away. And that's why we've had the penetration we've had. I mean we've got seven of the 10 largest US banks are using us, the healthcare similar representation. Now, we're getting into militaries and we're getting into public schools, but we're also involved in helping a lot of young companies just do it right the first time. So it's been an amazing journey, as we collaborate with all these great companies on how to make this platform more dedicated, more capable for their needs.

Dave Vellante

>> I wonder if I could follow up on that. I mean, just to your point, the browser was never meant to be a corporate security tool. It was really a consumer crawl the web, buy stuff, and you've really flipped that model specifically for enterprises. So you just laid out what that means for security policies in terms of simplification. I wonder if you could just double click on that and help us understand how organizations are deploying, what their lives are like, how it's different and you talked about some of the traction you're seeing in some key industries, but I wonder if you could just double click on that a little bit.

Michael Fey

>> Yeah. Let's take a basic call center today. A call center today, it might be a BPO. You might outsource that function. The minute you do that, now you're shipping them laptops, they're standing up a VPN to connect back to that corporate infrastructure. They're a contractor asset effectively. That traffic then spins up into that company, they open up a VDI session, something like Citrix or something like that. Then that traffic gets backhauled again. Then that traffic goes to a web filtering organization that then runs DOP checks on it and then finally gets to go to say Salesforce, the actual target. And then we have to augment that whole thing with things to understand the digital experience. And maybe we've got to build a robotic process automation with yet another couple tools. So what we're able to do is just take that browser in the Island format, and that browser now can just be sent to that BPO. The minute they do it, we connect to the VoIP system. So now we see who's calling, we fill a copy paste buffer with 50 pieces of information we know about that customer. They can drag and drop that. We can track that and turn that into an automated function. They don't have to have that traffic backhauled. It goes directly to where it needs to and the data stays where the organization wants it. So we can say these seven applications represent the day of a call center worker. Let's make all of those shared data but nowhere else. And we do that without VDI, without the backhaul, without the VPN, without the dedicated hardware. So the network's smaller, the expense is smaller and the security improves. But that call center worker now has basic automation back. Things that you and the consumer world would be upset by. Imagine if you had to put in your address every time you shopped. Well, think about that call center worker running across the same business case 5,000 times a day. That now can be automated as well. And then the IT team has all they need to give compliance, control, visibility. It's built into that. So the amount of tech around it shrinks. That means the resiliency improves, the uptime gets better, the end user responses better, but just importantly, the productivity of that worker improves and that worker wants to be productive. There's nothing more frustrating than repetitive tasks and things that don't make sense to a worker that they have to fight through every day at a job. So by removing that friction, we're able to add significant ROI and value out to all three constituencies, the business, the IT team and security. And that's what's really happening right now. We're having dramatic impacts on IT budgets.

Dave Vellante

>> We talked about this a little bit last year at RSA because I asked you why you started the company, but I want to ask you, you probably get this question a lot. How'd you come up with the concept of the enterprise browser? I mean, what signals did you see? What were the problems that you were hearing back then when you started the company from your customers? Because people always want to know like where did these ideas germinate? How did you start the company? Take us back there.

Michael Fey

>> Yeah. Well, my co-founder brought this idea forward that, "Mike, with this open source browser now, we can embed cyber security a bit." And that was intriguing. But the more we thought about it and say, "Are people really going to modify how they work just to get better with cyber security?" Cyber security has always been hidden in the shadows. So we thought about it some more and then we realized, "Wait a second, the browser itself, if you go back 30 years ago, looks exactly the same, the same buttons, the same controls, the basic same functionality." To the end user, it's the same app. So right away you start to think, wait a second. That's something that can be disruptive because it has been stagnant for so long. And have we really rethought what a knowledge worker does today? And when you realize that all of software is writing to the browser, not to the operating systems anymore, you realize that becomes a critical control point. So we went and we met with 100 CIOs and CISOs before we ever found with the company that we knew. We pitched them the idea and I think 97 out of 100 said, you got to do it. We've actually since got those last three as customers, so we're proud. We got a full circle on that. But it really was starting with what cyber security needed and realizing you had to give wins back to the end user. You have to do more than just be secure. You have to impact the business. And what we didn't realize five years ago is this is how the industry is moving at large. The CISOs are becoming the chief information security officers, are becoming CIOs. CIOs are now very capable security professionals as well. It's just part of the core job. So organizations are now looking at cyber security as something that needs to be baked into their platforms, not just added on. And we get to be one of the first real plays they can make with that new initiative.

Dave Vellante

>> Well, and the app dev team is increasingly more responsible for security as we shift left, the last thing they want to have to deal with is plug holes in browsers. I mean, your business has grown really fast. I first heard of Island, I think you came out of stealth right after COVID, and I think I read on SiliconANGLE, your customer counts are over 450 now. First of all, are these the right numbers? Maybe you could update us. What's been driving this rapid adoption? Again, startups, people want to know how you started the company and now how you're scaling, what challenges are you having in scaling, how you thinking about go to market? But update us on the customer accounts if you can. And then how are you scaling the company?

Michael Fey

>> So I think we're over 500 customers now and the beautiful thing is those customers land with a use case. They don't land just to modernize or just to do things better, just more secure. Usually, we're solving a real problem. How BYOD users can access corporate functions, how contractors can, how call center workers work, getting them off legacy BDI, changing that cost structure or fundamentally changing the security around the web format forum. So we land with those critical items and then we expand to the rest of the organization. So not only do we have 500 customers, we have an NRR, the repeat business as it were at over 150%, which is ridiculous. So we're landing and we're expanding. And those two functions are what drove this last round to such large valuations. But what really is driving it is it's a simple implementation at a time people are looking for better security and they're looking for ROI. They're trying to figure out how to do more with less, but they also appreciate there's a cybersecurity evolution occurring that they have to be prepared for. Those are the two driving it. And then we've been very fortunate. We've had some very large customers that are proud of the work that we've done together and they've given us an amazing word of mouth. So that's allowed us to scale our go to market org faster than say one that would be dependent on our marketing leads because our leads are coming by word of mouth even faster, than those that we can produce under traditional marketing approaches.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah. So it's really PLG right now, but it's interesting. You're creating a new category, which people always say, "Don't try to create a new category," and it's really hard to do. But I love the fact when CEOs and founders have the chutzpah to go do that. Now of course, with a $5 billion valuation, now the pressure's on game on, TAM expansion is if not now, I'm sure it's something you think about, but at some point you're really going to have to affect that. So as CEO, share your vision for Ireland over the next five years, how do you see the enterprise browser category and concept evolving? Will it become a standard part of the cybersecurity stack? What are you seeing?

Michael Fey

>> Yeah. I believe more now than ever that we will see enterprise browsers as the only browser on corporate environments in three years or less. The speed that's being taken up, the challenges we're solving are so fundamental that it just doesn't make sense not to do this. We will be in a scenario at some point in the not too distant future where the idea of using a consumer browser at work is as silly as sitting at a dining room table instead of a boardroom table. It just won't make sense. There's too many assets, too many fundamental improvements that occur in this platform that you can't take it seriously. And we see that every day because the way it occurs, we go to solve a problem, we deliver on that problem, and almost before the problem's actually solved, we see customers expanding the usage because they want their whole company on it. And that momentum is a very unique thing. And as you mentioned, we didn't want to start a category. That's terrible to do. It's so hard to do. It's so risky. But when we thought about what we were doing, there's just nothing else out there like it. Even things like secure browsers are far from what we're talking about here because we really are impacting productivity and the IT stack. So we begrudgingly said, "All right. Let's go create this category." And we've been resolute in doing that and we've expanded the function base of it. But most importantly, our customers are now using the category. They're now saying, "What's up next for the enterprise browser?" And they bring us back a ton of feature requests, which aren't about making the current product work. It's about adding features to displace other products and that drive more ROI. So it's as if we stayed in a design partnership with a couple of hundred companies from the start to this day, and I hope we never lose that.

Dave Vellante

>> Let's talk a little bit about leadership, leadership style. I mean, one of the leaders in cybersecurity that I really admire is George Kurtz. He was at McAfee. You've held top roles at McAfee, Symantec in the past. What have you learned? From what are now considered legacy security tools and companies, how have those experiences shaped your leadership style at Island and where you want to take the company?

Michael Fey

>> Well, I think first and foremost, our industry is driven by great people and you have to be able to recruit and retain amazing people. And that's the starting point. And I do believe that's a bit of Island secret sauce. We have had less than 10 voluntary attricians across the company in five years. So that means all these wonderful people we started with are still driving our vision, still driving the execution, driving the innovation, and I saw at those companies I was at before, if the key team stayed, they could do anything. But as the key team departed because of acquisitions or changing monetary policies of the companies, you could fundamentally see those companies change identities and usually for the worst. So to me, having that appreciation for the amazing people that you work with is the start. Then it's those customers. There are many customers that take the role of cybersecurity as a passion, not just a job. You need to listen to those. You need to collaborate with those people. They're trying to make our nation safer, the world safer, and they deeply care. And if you can work with them and show you care and you're responsive, they'll lean in even more. And I do believe in the early days, that combination of great people with passionate customers working together shaped the product we have today and continues to do. So those are a couple of the items. And then I think we've also learned you better keep innovating. There is no space in cybersecurity to just count on what you have, and innovation goes through different path. You'll see the big guys go from innovating at a security level to innovating at an adoption level. How do we make it easier? How do we make this stuff work better? How do we make it more pervasive? And that focus sometimes opens the door again for innovation about the tech. So we want to keep our eye on both sides of innovation. Innovation for easy adoption and full deployments and great capabilities, but also innovation on improving the actual functionality. You have to do both. And that's partly why we've raised so much cash along the way is you have to innovate on both fronts. You can't just choose one, and that takes a fairly substantial R&D team. We have over 200 engineers now working on this. That's as large an engineering team as you'll see on almost any product out there. So to be, if you will, a cybersecurity startup of note now you have to be substantive sides. It's not 10 guys in a garage anymore, and these are massive teams with amazing code bases.

Dave Vellante

>> Nice. That's a really good framework. We have RSAC conference coming up. We just did a special preview with a couple of the executives from RSAC. So I want to talk about the broader security trends. You hear a lot about zero trust security and SASE. Of course, AI is on everybody's mind. Where do you see Island fitting into all these cyber trends? For instance, how does secure enterprise browser complement, say, a zero trust strategy? What role might it play? What about AI? How does that affect what you guys are doing?

Michael Fey

>> Yeah. Enterprise browser is a fundamental component of what I would call the next version of zero trust. The zero trust we started with was this idea of aligning the identity and the network to affirm who you are and try to give some confidence that the person you're interacting with and how they're interacting with you aligns to your company's objectives. But the end point, once that connection was made, the data that got to the end point, that was left up for grabs. So I never thought it was truly a zero trust design. The zero trust design that makes sense to me is I don't trust the device. I never will. I need to get myself a safe Island on that device that I can count as sovereign territory, and then use that to make sure that I have a safe interaction with that user. Then I spin up things like the network, then I connect into identity and I leverage that further to complete the mission of Zero Trust. So Zero Trust is a large driver of what we do. Then AI comes in on top of it as the newest Shadow IT problem. When we first ran into Shadow IT, it was the idea of what websites are you using? Are you using bots and we want you on one drive? Have you signed up for some services the IT or doesn't know about? But it still is a fairly defined element that you could watch for, so we could do it at the network level. But now when we think about AI, if you go to Salesforce, are you using AI or not? When you go to Amazon, are using it? When you go to Google, are using it? It's not going to be wildly clear where and when you're using it. So you need to understand what the end user's doing and you need to have context. We work with one healthcare organization and their view on AI is we love it looking over the doctor's shoulders, but it cannot be involved in writing prescriptions. It can check a prescription but can't write it. How do you have that dexterity of what it's allowed to do and not allowed to do, if you're sitting out on the network? You need to be on the device watching it from a business case perspective and governing that. So shadow IT figuring out what to manage, then the ability to enforce how it runs is the area that we start to engage on. As all these great new AI tools hit the market to make our people more productive and solve real problems, we also have to make sure they don't reduce our security posture and we're a key part of that process.

Dave Vellante

>> Excellent. Hey, let's close on. What's next for Island? What should we be watching? You're going to be at RSAC, any other events that we should be paying attention to? Any launches that you maybe have planned, key partnerships you might be working on? What can you share with us?

Michael Fey

>> Yeah. So we've got a couple major partnerships, which I wish I could talk about right now. They're not quite ready, but they are substantial. So stay tuned there. I think we'll have some that really add value to our customer base. We'll continue to execute. We're doubling in size this year, so you'll see as louder in the market, you'll see as more pervasive and hopefully, serving our customers yet even better as a result. But at the end of the day, the mission we started out from five years ago has changed very little from when we started, which has allowed us to stay very focused on what we're building and very keep our engineering team very clear on their objectives. So it's one of these rare times where a startup hasn't had to do the redo button. We've never had to pivot, we've never had to go back and rewrite our stuff. So we really are building upon strength. People are going to see that this year with the launch of additional products, we now are running outside the browser. So we're controlling anything that comes through the browser, whether it's web-based or not. If it lands on your machine and brings up old Excel, great. We're still managing it. So that enterprise browser definition is truly expanding to be the future of work. And I think this year we'll start to really make our name for ourselves in that path and we'll continue on to that to hopefully a very long private public company.

Dave Vellante

>> Well, congratulations, Michael. Really appreciate your participating in the CUBEd Awards program. We're going to see you at RSAC. Of course, theCUBE will be there at Meteor Row and Moscone West this month. And Michael, we wish you the best of luck.

Michael Fey

>> Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Dave Vellante

>> All right. And thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante, and we'll see you next time on theCUBE.