Dallas-based cybersecurity company Island took the No. 28 spot on the 2026 CNBC Disruptor 50 list released Tuesday, landing as the highest-ranked Texas company on the annual ranking of private, venture-backed disruptors. It’s also the only company headquartered in Dallas-Fort Worth on this year’s list.

CNBC’s one-line label for the unicorn valued at nearly $5 billion: “Not just browsing.” Island is the maker of the Island Enterprise Browser, a custom web browser with security and IT controls embedded in the browsing experience. The company recently extended its platform to consumer browsers, desktop apps, and the network.

The recognition puts Island in a cohort that CNBC says is “experimenting with AI and, increasingly, making it work at scale.” The class is led this year by Anthropic at No. 1, OpenAI at No. 2, and Databricks at No. 3. CNBC reported that 43 of the 50 companies on this year’s list say AI is essential to their disruptive business models, and that total implied valuation across the cohort climbed to $2.4 trillion in 2026 from $798 billion a year ago, roughly tripling.

Two other Texas companies made the list, both based in Austin: Saronic at No. 40 and Apptronik at No. 50.

‘A tremendous honor’

In the company’s announcement of the honor, Mike Fey, Island’s CEO and co-founder, tied the recognition to the company’s pitch to large enterprises. “Being named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 is a tremendous honor,” Fey said. “Organizations everywhere are rethinking how work gets done, embracing a model where security, productivity, and simplicity are built directly into the workspace itself.”

Island, started in 2020 by Fey and Dan Amiga, emerged from stealth in February 2022 with the launch of its Enterprise Browser. The company, which has raised roughly $730 million in outside investment to date, secured a $250 million Series E led by Coatue Management in March 2025. A few months later, in July 2025, J.P. Morgan Private Capital’s Growth Equity Partners joined the round as a strategic investor. “Cybersecurity is a top strategic priority for the world’s largest enterprises,” Paris Heymann, co-managing partner of J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, said in the announcement.

Island’s customer base includes several of the largest U.S. banks and dozens of Fortune 500 companies in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and travel, according to the company. Annual recurring revenue has more than doubled year over year since launching, Island said.

A three-front product expansion in March

The CNBC honor lands roughly two months after Island’s March 17 platform expansion. In a three-pronged launch, the company introduced its unified workspace platform aimed at letting Fortune 500 organizations scale AI without losing control of their data.

The first announcement introduced the Island Enterprise Platform, unifying Island’s security policies across three surfaces: the Island Enterprise Browser, the Island Extension (which applies Island’s controls to consumer browsers such as Chrome and Safari), and Island Desktop (which extends those controls to thick desktop apps). Through a single management console, the platform now governs AI tools, networks, data, identity, endpoints, and productivity services, the company said.

“Organizations have assembled a massive stack of point solutions,” Fey said at the time. “While each was a rational answer to a tactical problem, over time, the solutions themselves became the problem.”

SASE rebuilt for AI

The second release introduced four AI offerings designed to let companies adopt generative and agentic AI without losing visibility into how employees use it: AI Protect, AI Browser, AI Automation, and AI Publish. The release cited a Gartner warning that, through 2026, “80% of unauthorized AI transactions will stem from internal policy violations—such as information oversharing—rather than malicious external attacks.”

Amiga, Island’s CTO, said in the announcement that AI tools entering the workplace can offer power, but guardrails are needed. “Without visibility and governance, advantage quickly turns into exposure,” he said. Island’s four AI offerings are designed to close that gap.

The company’s third release, SASE Rebuilt for the AI Era, unveiled what the company calls the Perfect Packet architecture, a rebuilt secure access service edge (SASE) network model that inspects traffic on the device or at nearby cloud points of presence rather than routing it through a central proxy. Island said the architecture lets up to 90% of sessions go direct with no backhaul, delivers application access up to 10 times faster on the direct path, and can be deployed in as few as five minutes across managed and unmanaged devices.

Amiga noted that “if your SASE can’t see what’s happening inside an AI session, you’re not governing AI. You’re guessing.” The company built the Perfect Packet network, he said, “because the old model of backhauling everything through a proxy adds blind spots and cost.”

A run of recognition

Landing on the CNBC list adds to a steady run of honors for Island over the past year. The company cited inclusion on Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech (2025), the Forbes Cloud 100 (2024 and 2025), the Fortune Cyber 60 (2023, 2024, and 2025), and the LinkedIn Top Startups 2025: Dallas list, where Island placed at No. 1.

Earlier this year, D CEO put Fey on the cover of its January/February 2026 issue, describing Island as “one of the fastest-growing startups in the country.”  CEO Fey was named the Startup Leader of the Year at the 2026 Innovation Awards, presented jointly by Dallas Innovates and D CEO magazine in January.

CNBC said it curates the Disruptor 50 with input from data partners PitchBook and IBISWorld and from the Disruptor 50 Advisory Council, weighing business-model strength, scalability, and customer growth.

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